#rep. Elise Stefanik

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

“Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries clearly won the day on Tuesday. He made history as the first Black House caucus leader; it was also the first time (to the best of my fact-checking ability) Brooklyn’s Biggie Smalls was quoted on the House floor. While Republicans savaged one another, Democrats spread love. Jubilant, they looked like they were in the majority, not (narrowly) outnumbered by Republicans. While it’s still extremely unlikely, Jeffries went to bed closer to being House Speaker than he was Tuesday morning. Let it be said that in all three roll calls, Jeffries got 212 votes, at least nine more than McCarthy, and only a few shy of what the next Speaker will need.

Debased House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is still not speaker, after three roll call votes in which he actually lost support. What happens when a man tries to sell his soul but finds no buyer? (A question for House Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, too.) McCarthy gave the wing nuts virtually everything they asked for—the ability for only five members to force a vote to oust him as leader, key committee appointments, other rules changes, a gutted ethics committee, the ability to defund federal departments they don’t like. But they didn’t budge, and in fact their numbers climbed from an estimated five in the morning to 20 at 5 PM.

That’s when Representative Tom Cole moved to adjourn until noon on Wednesday. There had been talk that McCarthy and Co. wanted at least one more roll call vote, to “wear down” the opposition. But since the opposite was happening—the opposition was emboldened—most of the House did McCarthy a solid by voting to end his grueling day of trial by procedural combat.

Let it not be said, however, that the divided House GOP majority changed nothing. Shortly after noon on Tuesday, House security officials took down the weapon-detecting magnetometers, installed after January 6, that were intended to make sure no one entered the House chamber with a weapon. So there’s that.

There will be plenty of assessments of McCarthy’s plight after Tuesday, but I want to focus on Jeffries’s victory, even if it only lasts a day. It was also Nancy Pelosi’s: As she turned over her leadership post to Jeffries, she also bequeathed him a caucus schooled in sticking together, left, liberal, and center, when it matters most. I don’t think Beltway reporters addicted to a “Dems in disarray” story line ever understood what Pelosi accomplished, whether it was delivering her whole caucus for the Affordable Care Act in 2010, when the left was itching to bolt, to all the times she kept her members united under Donald Trump, to the selective defections she allowed—by the so-called Squad as well as centrists—as she pushed President Biden’s agenda in the past two years, knowing that certain members might need to go their own way given the proclivities of their districts.

So far, Jeffries hasn’t needed to grant any dispensation to Democrats to vote for someone else as Speaker. He won all Democratic votes, in a Speaker battle, for the first time since Pelosi did in 2007. That makes sense: Even though he is a liberal not unanimously beloved on the left, he won his caucus leader post by unanimous acclamation. Any reservations members had about him, whether from the left or the center, got subsumed by learned behavior: Being united has paid dividends for Democrats. Why stop now?

Midafternoon Tuesday, several reporters with GOP sources began floating the idea that Democrats might leave the floor, reducing the overall number of votes McCarthy would need to become Speaker. (The victor needs a majority of those present and voting for a named candidate, not of the entire House). I called bullshit at the time. It made no sense, given how Republicans were self-immolating. If there were a vital House Democratic center, maybe there would be people trying to cut deals with Republicans. (And while there isn’t, it’s still possible some incompetents are trying.)

Actually, a vital House Democratic center might be approaching Republicans in districts Joe Biden won to get them to vote for Jeffries. There are at least five: in Southern California, central New York, and southeastern Pennsylvania. Maybe Problem Solver Josh Gottheimer can work his magic? I doubt it. In fact, a much-gossipped-about photo capturing Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez chatting amiably with GOP psycho dentist Paul Gosar, who once produced a cartoon of himself killing the Bronx-Queens leader, turned out to show AOC gently disabusing Gosar of the notion that Democrats were ready to walk out and make it easier for McCarthy to win. “Dems in disarray,” d’oh! That message is strong.

It must be said that despite ideological fractures within the Democratic caucus, Jeffries had the unanimous support of the Congressional Black Caucus, and his historic leadership role, by most accounts, trumped policy differences. Progressives bristled last cycle when he joined with Gottheimer to thwart progressive Democratic challengers and refused “to bend the knee to democratic socialism,” as he put it. (As if anyone asked him to.) But when I heard Cori Bush cast her vote for Jeffries the first time, I knew he’d get all 212 Democrats. And he did. Three times.

After a brutal House GOP caucus meeting Tuesday morning, implacable McCarthy foe Matt Gaetz of Florida, who seems to have survived sex trafficking accusations, allegedly said, “I don’t care if we…elect Hakeem Jeffries.” I don’t believe that any more than I believe anything Gaetz says, but it’s still out there. Not counting on it, not betting on it, but whatever happens, Jeffries is in a hugely stronger position after this GOP multiple-vote shit show than he was even when Tuesday began. No matter who becomes Speaker, he’s going to be the most important House leader.

[soon-palestine]

The House of Representatives has voted to effectively conceal the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.

On Thursday, lawmakers voted 269-144 on an amendment to prohibit the State Department from citing statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry. The measure is part of the annual State Department appropriations bill. It was led by Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Fla., and Josh Gottheimer, N.J., and Republican Reps. Joe Wilson, S.C.; Mike Lawler, N.Y.; and Carol Miller, W.V.

In total, 62 Democrats joined 207 Republicans in supporting the amendment.Here are the 62 Democrats who joined 207 Republicans to ban giving funds to the State Department to cite the Gaza Health Ministry, undermining the organization’s death & injury figures. https://t.co/n7DveMQaPQ pic.twitter.com/Nas0Fgm4Ag

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) June 27, 2024

While party leaders often push their members to vote “yes” or “no” on any range of proposals, Democratic leadership gave “no recommendation” to its members on how to vote on the amendment. After the House passes the full bill, it will head to the Senate for consideration.

Mohammed Khader, policy manager at the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, told The Intercept that the amendment is part of a trend of anti-Palestinian sentiment in Congress since the start of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. “By preventing any recognition of the number of Palestinians killed since October, this amendment is a clear example of genocide denial and is no different from what was done towards victims of genocides in Rwanda and Armenia.”

On Wednesday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian member of Congress, took to the floor to make a similar argument. “This is genocide denial,” she said.

After reciting the death toll and other statistics about casualties, Tlaib said she intended to introduce the list of Palestinians killed in Gaza to the congressional record. “It is important to note this to everyone here: The list is too long that I can’t even submit it because of the text limit,” she said. “That’s how many have been killed.”

The Ministry of Health is the only official entity tracking the death toll in Gaza; its figures have been cited broadly, including by the U.S. and Israeli governments. Over the last eight months, Israel has killed at least 37,765 people and injured another 86,429, according to the ministry’s latest figures. These numbers are likely an undercount due to the decimated medical infrastructure, killed medical workers, and thousands feared trapped under the rubble in Gaza.

“It’s despicable but not shocking that 62 Democrats joined Republicans to refute the Gaza death toll,” one Democratic staffer told The Intercept. “Democratic leadership should be ashamed for refusing to take a stand and call out the blatant anti-Palestinian racism and genocide denial in our party.”

Moskowitz and Gottheimer are among several Democrats who have repeatedly worked to undermine the movement for Palestinian rights and pro-Palestinian speech.

In April, the pair joined Republicans to lead a resolution condemning the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as antisemitic. In December, the duo joined Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik and Steve Scalise to lead a resolution condemning university presidents and calling for their resignations for allegedly tolerating antisemitism on campus. In November, the two Democrats joined 20 others in censuring Tlaib, for reasons that included posting a video calling for a ceasefire that contained the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

Gottheimer has gone even further, calling Democrats who don’t support Israel a “cancer” and suggesting that Muslims in America are “guilty” of Hamas’s attack on October 7. Along with Lawler, he headlined a call hosted by No Labels, in which he spoke with university trustees about how to push the FBI to take a bigger role in investigating campus protests. During that call, Lawler suggested that student protests for Palestine were the type of activity that inspired the TikTok ban.

The pair also joined 60 other Democrats in expressing their “disgust” at South Africa’s 84-page suit accusing Israel of genocide and praising White House spokesperson John Kirby for calling it “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basic in fact whatsoever.” Not long after, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.

[jackpolakoff]

[odinsblog]

Dear President Shafik,

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.

Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.

The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.

In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.

Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.

The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.

As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.

By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.

The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.

Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.

Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.

—Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism

The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Donald Trump was NOT convicted by Joe Biden, he was NOT convicted by the Judge, he was NOT convicted by the District Attorney.  Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers. A jury, I should note, that Trump was personally “very much involved” in picking per his lawyer Todd Blanche on CNN Thursday night. And that conviction happened in the state where Trump committed his crimes after a full trial that lasted more than a month where Trump was represented by a team of very experienced lawyers who presented his best defense. That is how our Constitution and criminal justice system works. There were no surprises here. As I predicted in my article before the trial began, “Trump is going to be a Convicted Felon by June." That was based on my experience as a trial lawyer and after reviewing the evidence the prosecutors had laid out in their pleadings. Common sense said that the only reason Trump paid Stormy Daniels “hush money” ten years after their affair —but just a week before the 2016 election—was to defraud voters of the truth. To that end, Trump falsified business records to conceal his illegal scheme. The jury saw the facts as they were, hence Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts and is now a CONVICTED FELON.

Yet now we see Trump and MAGA reject the jury verdict by attacking it as “rigged,” a “sham,” etc. MAGA House Speaker Mike Johnson called the verdict, “the weaponization of our justice system.”  Marco Rubio weighed in on Twitter, writing, “The verdict in New York is a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.”  The always awful MAGA Rep. Elise Stefanik, posted, “Today’s verdict shows how corrupt, rigged, and unAmerican the weaponized justice system has become under Joe Biden and Democrats.”  Spineless Tim Scott said on CNN Thursday night, “This was certainly a hoax, a sham” with the even worse Ted Cruz stating, “This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution.” And the list goes on and on. But this is no surprise, it’s part of MAGA telling us they reject our Constitution and the foundations of our democratic Republic. After all, Trump and MAGA rejected the 2020 election results because Trump lost. They rejected the criminal justice system when they smeared the indictments against Trump as being a sham. And now they publicly reject our jury system, which is one of the cornerstones of the US Constitution as laid out in the Sixth Amendment.

The question that must be asked is given Trump and MAGA reject our elections, our criminal justice system, the rule of law and our Constitution, what exactly do they support?! The answer is simple: Convicted Felon Trump. That’s it. [...] Let me repeat what I’ve been writing and saying for months: Don’t count on the courts, the prosecutors or a jury to save us from Donald Trump. We are the only ones who can do that by coming out in huge numbers to defeat him this November. This may sound jarring but it’s the truth: MAGA is a cancer. If allowed to metastasis, it will kill our democratic Republic that so many sacrificed so much to defend. The good news though is that the cure to MAGA cancer is right in front of us. All it takes is voting in big numbers this November.

The butthurt MAGAs crying and whining about Convicted Felon Donald Trump being convicted on 34 charges for business records falsification is more proof that the extremist anti-American MAGA cult needs to be crushed at all costs.

See Also:

Vox: Why the ludicrous Republican response to Trump’s conviction matters

MMFA: MAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

RWW: MAGA Martyrdom Machine Portrays Felon Trump as Victim, Vows Revenge

HuffPost: Right-Wingers Are Already Promising Vengeance After The Trump Verdict

Daily Kos: Republicans choose MAGA lunacy over the law after Trump's conviction

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

By Josh Christenson

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik called Monday for Congress to sanction the International Criminal Court following prosecutors’ announcement they will seek an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The ICC is an illegitimate court that equivocates a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical terror groups that commit genocide,” Stefanik (R-NY) told The Post.

“Congress must pass my bill with Congressman Chip Roy, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, that will punish those in the ICC that made this baseless undemocratic decision.”

7Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday morning as the ICC announced warrants against him for crimes against humanity.X / @EliseStefanik

ICC chief prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan announced the filing of arrest warrant applications against both Netanyahu and Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for allegedly committing crimes against humanity during the Jewish state’s seven-month-old war against Hamas in Gaza.

Earlier this month, Stefanik and Roy (R-Texas), responding to reports that the warrants would be sought, introduced the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to revoke visas for ICC officials who investigate or prosecute US officials or American allies.

The bill also revokes visas for any other ICC employees or their immediate family members acting on behalf of such an investigation or prosecution.

Israel, like the US, does not officially recognize the ICC’s authority, giving it no jurisdiction over Netanyahu or Gallant, as South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) pointed out.

“The decision to seek arrest warrants is not law but politics. It is not justice but rather retribution against Israel for the original sin of existing as a Jewish State and the subsequent sin of defending itself amid the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” Torres said on X Monday.

[nodynasty4us]

Who will Trump choose for VP? (final round)

I had to delete the first version of this because I accidentally set it for only one day and I misspelled a name.

This does not necessarily mean who you would prefer, just who you think is most likely to get the nod.

These choices are the high scorers in the preliminary round of polls, names leaked by the Trump campaign to several news outlets earlier this week, and a couple of people mentioned by one columnist after the preliminary polls began.

As always, please reblog this poll so that more people have the opportunity to vote in it.

[pennsyltuckyheathen]

Cheney recirculates Stefanik Jan. 6 statement after she reportedly deletes it | The Hill

Stefanik has fully completed her transition to Trump sycophant and bootlicker. The last traces of her integrity, character and morality have been cast aside. Abusing the trust of her constituents and using her elected office for which she swore an oath to the United States of America to knowingly and intentionally deceive Americans for the benefit of TraitorTrump and herself.

[breakingfirst]

Enough is ENOUGH!!! 🔥⬆️

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

They’re taking over the country. They control everything. Billionaire fascist oligarchs like Koch, Crow, and Walton fund them. We do nothing but bitch online after the fact.

If we don’t organize and take to the streets it’s Nazi Germany and we’re the enemies of the state.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik had a sharp response to the news that University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill was stepping down from her position over the weekend: “One down. Two to go.”

It was Stefanik’s line of questioning at a hearing last week before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that attracted the most attention from the roughly five hours of testimony. A series of exchanges went viral when Magill and other university presidents at Harvard and MIT failed to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews as explicitly against campus rules on harassment and bullying. The answers from such high-profile leaders in higher education sparked bipartisan backlash and condemnation, which led to Magill’s departure and increasing pressure to oust both Harvard’s President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth.

Stefanik, a Harvard graduate herself, has been leading the charge since the hearing to highlight and investigate campus antisemitism, and her efforts have attracted supporters from across the aisle as well as former President Donald Trump.

In a new statement Monday, Stefanik again called out MIT and Harvard, saying, “The leadership at these universities is totally unfit and untenable.”

“As clear evidence of the vastness of the moral rot at every level of these schools, this earthquake has revealed that Harvard and MIT are totally unable to grasp this grave question of moral clarity at this historic moment as the world is watching in horror and disgust,” Stefanik said in the statement. “It is pathetic and abhorrent.”

Stefanik announced late last week the committee was launching an investigation into Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. While the investigation became public before news of Magill’s resignation broke, the New York congresswoman’s statements since then have made clear she’s not finished with the issue.

“This forced resignation of the President of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required,” Stefanik said in a statement over the weekend. “These universities can anticipate a robust and comprehensive Congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions’ negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, and overall leadership and governance.”

Former Penn board chair Scott Bok also resigned Saturday.

Trump praised Stefanik as “very smart” over the weekend.

“I guess they’re all gonna be losing their jobs within the next day or two, but one down, two to go,” Trump said in a speech hosted by the New York Young Republican Club late Saturday night – repeating Stefanik’s line hours after she put her statement out.

Stefanik has a polarizing reputation on Capitol Hill as a staunch supporter of Trump. But the congresswoman has managed to amass Democratic support for pushing for the ouster of university presidents. She co-wrote a letter dated Friday with Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida demanding those presidents’ removal. The letter was also signed by Democrats Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Joe Courtney of Connecticut.

“I am proud to lead a bipartisan letter with @RepMoskowitz and 72 of our colleagues to the members of the Governing Boards of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn demanding that their presidents be removed after this week’s @EdWorkforceCmte hearing,” Stefanik tweeted Friday.

Gay has since apologized for her remarks, in an interview with The Harvard Crimson on Thursday.

“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” Gay told the student newspaper. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “Words matter.”

The Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation, MIT’s governing board, issued a statement last week saying President Sally Kornbluth has their “full and unreserved support.”

Stefanik, who was first elected in 2014, replaced then-Rep. Liz Cheney as GOP conference chairwoman in May 2021. While she voted against one of Trump signature legislative victories – his 2017 tax plan – she attracted significant attention for her impassioned defense of Trump around the former president’s first impeachment investigation in 2019.

While she’s been one of the most visible messengers for the House GOP Conference, she was not one of the many Republicans to throw themselves in for nomination to be the next House Speaker, after Kevin McCarthy was ousted earlier this fall.

Since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the Department of Education has opened an unprecedented number of investigations into alleged incidents of hate on college campuses.

Both Harvard and Penn, along with 11 other colleges and five K-12 school districts, have come under investigation since that time. The Department of Education has told CNN that the situation is becoming untenable for the Office for Civil Rights, and that it doesn’t have the investigative staff to match the influx of cases, shining a light on where the investigation Stefanik announced last week may be able to fill in those gaps.

[soon-palestine]

JVL Introduction

The Presidents of three leading US universities were falsely accused of condoning anti-Semitism on their campuses in a highly partisan ambush in front of US congressional hearing in December. Now the Columbia President, Minouche Shafik, is being summoned and 23 of her Jewish faculty are urging her not to give in to attempts to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and to defend academic freedom at her campus.

They strongly contest assertions that antisemitism is rife at Columbia. They accept that many students are unsettled by the intensity of debate around the Gaza catastrophe but being uncomfortable is far from being discriminated against or threatened.

They deplore the recent actions of the University’s management to use disciplinary processes to clamp down on protest and see this as an abandonment of Columbia’s record of confronting smears and slanders levelled against staff and students and committing to free inquiry and robust disagreement.

MC

This article was originally published by Columbia Spectator on Wed 10 Apr 2024. Read the original here. Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism

by 23 Columbia and Barnard faculty, Columbia Spectator

Dear President Shafik,

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.

Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.

The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.

In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.

Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.

The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.

As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.

By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.

The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.

Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.

Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.

Sincerely,Debbie Becher, Barnard College Helen Benedict, Columbia Journalism School Susan Bernofsky, School of the Arts Elizabeth Bernstein, Barnard College Nina Berman, Columbia Journalism School Amy Chazkel, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Yinon Cohen, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nora Gross, Barnard College Keith Gessen, Columbia Journalism School Jack Halberstam, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Sarah Haley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Michael Harris, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Jennifer S. Hirsch, Mailman School of Public Health Marianne Hirsch, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emerita) Joseph A. Howley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences David Lurie, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nara Milanich, Barnard College D. Max Moerman, Barnard College Manijeh Moradian, Barnard College Sheldon Pollock, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emeritus) Bruce Robbins, Faculty of Arts & Sciences James Schamus, School of the Arts Alisa Solomon, Columbia Journalism School

The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.

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Congressional Republicans are investigating Vice President Kamala Harris' national security adviser, Phil Gordon, over his alleged ties to an Iran-backed influence network.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) are heading the probe, questioning Gordon's connections to Ariane Tabatabai, a senior Department of Defense official with top-secret security clearance who was recently outed in a report by Semafor accusing him of being a member of an Iranian-run influence network that reports back to Tehran's foreign ministry and helps push its policies among lawmakers in Washington. (Related: Deep state plotting SECOND assassination attempt on Trump, via IRAN.)

Tabatabai's alleged links to the organization prompted a congressional probe and calls among Republicans for her security clearance to be yanked.

Chris Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, disclosed the investigation during testimony before Congress. Tabatabai serves as Maier's chief of staff.

Part of the investigation is concerned with how much Iranian interests have influenced the administration of President Joe Biden and Harris, and the effect this may have had on the national security of the United States. As the 2024 election approaches, Gordon's ties to pro-Tehran advocacy groups are likely to remain a focal point of scrutiny.

"Before joining your office, Gordon co-authored at least three opinion pieces with Tabatabai blatantly promoting the Iranian regime's perspective and interests. In a March 2020 piece, Gordon and Tabatabai claimed continued sanctions on Iran would create 'catastrophe' in the Middle East," wrote Cotton and Stefanik in a letter to Harris. "In another, they wrote sanctions could lead to new Iranian efforts to 'lash out with attacks on its neighbors, and on Americans and American interests in the Middle East.' Each prediction was as wrong, as it was biased in favor of Tehran."

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In a pivotal Congressional hearing last week that examined rampant anti-Semitism in some of the nation’s Ivy League universities, the presidents of Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania shocked the world when they refused to affirm that calls for genocide of Jews in their respective institutions violate their schools’ code of conduct.

It was a profound moment of reckoning not only for the leaders of these elite institutions but for a society that looks to them as beacons of leadership. The hearing tore aside the veil masking spiraling anti-Semitic bigotry within these universities and the complicity of its leaders in allowing it to fester.

At the House Committee on Education hearing, Republicans showed footage of fierce anti-Israel protests at their schools, many of which included virulent hate speech toward Jews and calls for genocide.

Yet the Ivy League presidents being questioned appeared to inhabit their own bubble, disconnected from the alarming footage. They seemed to expect their defense of obscene Jew-hatred as protected “free speech” would win approval, if not in the halls of Congress then with grass-roots Americans.

Instead, “support for the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and M.I.T. eroded quickly,” wrote the New York Times, “after they seemed to evade what seemed like a rather simple question: Would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews?”

Their responses “drew incredulous responses,” the Times article said, as a chorus of influential voices condemned the presidents’ failure to unequivocally denounce calls for the murder of Jews and to outlaw such conduct.

‘One Down, Two to Go’

As calls mounted for the resignation of the school presidents, including from alumni, members of Congress and billionaire donors who announced they were withdrawing their gifts, president Liz Magill of UPenn walked back her congressional testimony saying she hadn’t been “properly focusing.” The next day she announced that she was stepping down.

“One down, two to go,” commented Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, who has led demands for accountability on the part of the three university administrators for their lack of “moral clarity and leadership.”

“This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America,” said Stefanik. “This forced resignation of the president of UPenn is the bare minimum of what is required. These universities can anticipate a comprehensive Congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions’ perpetration of antisemitism. This includes administrative, faculty, funding, and overall leadership and governance.”

“Harvard and MIT, do the right thing. The world is watching,” she added.

Following the hearing, Rep. Stefanik announced that the House Education and Workforce Committee is “launching an official congressional investigation with the full force of subpoena power” into the three universities, among others.”

In addition, Stefanik led 73 members of Congress, from both the Republican and Democratic parties, in drafting a scathing letter to the boards of the three universities under investigation.

“I am proud to lead a bipartisan letter with Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-FL, and 72 of our colleagues to the members of the Governing Boards of Harvard, MIT, and Penn demanding that their presidents be removed after this week’s Education and Workforce Committee hearing,” Stefanik wrote.

“Testimony provided by presidents of your institutions showed a complete absence of moral clarity, and illuminated the double standards and dehumanization of the Jewish communities that your university presidents enabled,” the letter to the governing boards said.

“The leadership of top universities plays a pivotal role in shaping the moral compass of our future leaders,” the letter went on. “It is critically important that such leadership reflects a clear commitment to combating antisemitism, along with all forms of hate speech and bigotry.”

“Given this moment of crisis,” the letter said, “we demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan to ensure that Jewish and Israeli students, teachers and faculty are safe on your campuses.”

Talk But No Action  

The hearing, “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism,” began as both Republican and Democratic members of the House grilled the three female presidents, demanding to know how each has addressed the spike in antisemitism since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

“Today, each of you will have a chance to answer, to atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism on your respective campuses that have denied students the safe learning environment,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chairwoman for the House Education Committee, told them in her opening statement.

Far from acknowledging that anti-Semitism had surged out of control under their watch, each president staunchly defended her record, proudly pointing to various measures she had taken to increase campus security and open investigations into anti-Semitic episodes.

Noticeably absent from these self-congratulatory remarks was any mention of actual penalties or disciplinary procedures meted out to students or faculty proven to have engaged in egregious anti-Semitic harassment. When questioned about what disciplinary measures are being employed, the presidents refused to answer.

Representative Elise Stefanik, R.-NY, zoned in on this glaring disconnect by repeatedly asking the presidents if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the code of conduct at their schools, and would they discipline a student engaged in this conduct?

Moral Imperatives Vanish When It’s About Anti-Semitism

All three danced around the question, throwing out legalistic catchphrases to avoid a direct answer. When finally cornered, the presidents insisted that everything depends on “context.” In other words, calls for violence against Jews are not inherently wrong or against school policy.

The following segment of the dialogue captures this shocking stance that sparked an intense backlash.

Rep Stefanik: President Magill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?”

UPenn President Liz Magill: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes.

Rep. Stefanik: I am asking whether specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?”

Magill: If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment, yes.”

Stefanik: “Conduct” meaning committing the act of genocide?

Magill: It is a context-dependent question, congresswoman.”

Stefanik responded with shock.

“That’s your testimony today? Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent on the context? It’s not bullying or harassment? This is the easiest question to answer yes for,” Stefanik said. She then threw the question at Harvard president Claudine Gay.

Stefanik:  And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”

Gay: “It can be, depending on the context.”

Stefanik: Genocide that is targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”

Gay: “Again, it depends on the context.”

“It does not depend on the context,” Stefanik shot back. “The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.”

Intense Backlash Against College Presidents

Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House Republican, was not the only one outraged by the moral obtuseness on display in the presidents’ responses. Their refusal to condemn calls for the murder of Jews drew fire from alumni, university donors, elected officials and influential commentators from across the political spectrum.

On a deeper level, the presidents’ response threw light on a corrosive atmosphere prevalent in leading universities today where time-honored moral and ethical principles have been eviscerated by woke and left-wing ideology.

Those immersed in this sea of indoctrination appear out of sync with the rest of the world. This might explain the bizarre disconnect in the exchanges between the Ivy League presidents and the members of congress at the hearing.

“It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. “Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting — and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”

“After this week’s pathetic and morally bankrupt testimony by university presidents when answering my questions, the Education and Workforce Committee is launching an official congressional investigation with the full force of subpoena power into Penn, MIT, Harvard, and others,” Rep. Elise Stefanik said in a statement.

“We will use our full congressional authority to hold these schools accountable for their failure on the global stage.”

Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley posted the video of the interactions at the hearing online, saying such remarks by the college presidents “will end or we’ll pull their tax-exempt status.”

“Calling for genocide of Jews is no different than calling for genocide of any other ethnic, racial, or religious group. The equivocation from these college presidents is disgusting,” Haley said.

Private equity billionaire Marc Rowan wrote a message to UPenn trustees saying he heard from hundreds of alumni, parents and leaders who were shocked by the hearing. “The University is suffering tremendous reputational damage,” Rowan wrote in the message, obtained by CNN. “How much damage to our reputation are we willing to accept?”

‘The Three Behaved Like Hostile Witnesses’

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman called for the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania to “resign in disgrace,” citing disgust with their testimony.

“Throughout the hearing, the three behaved like hostile witnesses,” Ackman wrote in an online post, “exhibiting a profound disdain for the Congress with their smiles and smirks, and their outright refusal to answer basic questions with a yes or no answer.”

Ackman, a Harvard graduate who has been a vocal critic of how universities have addressed antisemitism, posted a clip from the exchange at the hearing where the university leaders were asked about calls for the genocide of Jews.

“They must all resign in disgrace. If a CEO of one of our companies gave a similar answer, he or she would be toast within the hour,” Ackman said. “The answers they gave reflect the profound moral bankruptcy of Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth.”

“Why has anti-Semitism exploded on campus and around the world? Because of leaders like Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth who believe genocide depends on the context,” Ackman said.

The criticism of the university leaders was so strong that president Gay of Harvard and Magill of UPenn felt compelled to issue new statements attempting to “clarify” the testimony. These revamped assertions contradicted their earlier statements that threats of anti-Semitic violence did not automatically qualify as harassment.

In a brazen about face, Magill now termed calls for genocide “vile,” and vowed to hold perpetrators to account.

Gay made similar contrite retractions, saying she was “sad” that her words “had caused pain,” and affecting distress that critics were confusing her support for “the right to free expression with the idea that Harvard would condone calls for violence against Jewish students.”

Bomb Threats; Hillel and Chabad Houses Vandalized

Despite the illusions the Ivy League presidents tried to project of their administrations managing the anti-Semitic outbreaks on their campus, many Jewish students say they feel threatened daily, not just by fellow students but by faculty and staff as well, the Free Beacon reported.

“As a student, despite what my university says, I do not feel safe,” said University of Pennsylvania senior Eyal Yakoby. “Let me be clear: I do not feel safe.”

Yakoby described several incidents on campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. They included “a bomb threat against Hillel; a swastika spray-painted on the Hillel building; the Chabad house vandalized; a professor posting an armed wing of Hamas’s logo on Facebook, a Jewish student accosted with hostility; and ‘Jews are Nazis’ etched adjacent to Penn’s Jewish fraternity house.”

He also referenced a Dec. 3 protest that saw participants vandalize school property with graffiti calling for an “intifada,” and chant in Arabic, “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab.”

Harvard Law School student Jonathan Frieden described the fear gripping many Jewish students. “I talk to my Jewish friends on campus every day,” he said. “They tell me how afraid they are to go to class. They share hate messages they are receiving from other students on social media, including comparing Jews to Nazis. And they ask each other for safety advice because of the lack of effective communication from the university.”

Frieden described an incident where pro-Palestinian protesters swarmed a law school building he was inside while they chanted slogans including “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada.” He witnessed Jewish students take off their yarmulkes and one student hide underneath a desk, he said.

All four students also castigated their administrations, alleging that they failed to do anything meaningful to tackle the anti-Semitic climate on campus.

New Trend: Jewish High School Grads Abandon Ivy League Plans

An article in National Review, a conservative magazine, discusses a new trend among Jewish high school graduates in the wake of the anti-Semitism crisis on college campuses: a growing disenchantment with the Ivy League image.

Fueled by the specter of pervasive anti-Semitism and hostility in these schools, bright Jewish students are rethinking their Ivy League aspirations and turning to smaller, less prestigious colleges.

To take a few examples from one Ivy League school, since October 7, “Columbia has become a byword in American Jewish circles for rampant antisemitism,” the article noted. “In the past two months, an Israeli student was assaulted on campus, and people have screamed profanities at religious Jewish students.”

In another example, reports in an online paper noted that an Israeli student at Columbia, introducing himself on the first day of class, was targeted with an anti-Israel slur by a professor who asked him, “So you must know a lot about settler colonialism. How do you feel about that?”

Another academic reportedly observed to a Jewish student, “It’s such a shame that your people survived just in order to perpetuate genocide.”

Columbia’s apathy in the face of corrosive anti-Semitism has driven donors away, prompting the administration to do serious damage control to prove their concern for Jewish students’ safety, the National Review article noted. In early November, the school suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a rabid pro-Palestinian group, for “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”

Columbia graduate Anna Feldman told NR that even before October 7, she always felt she was walking around on “eggshells whenever the topic was Jewish people or Israel. I always felt like I couldn’t say what I had to say about Israel or the Middle East in general.”

She noted that the much publicized episodes of anti-Semitism at Columbia after Oct. 7 were nothing new to her. They were part of the university’s everyday landscape, driven by left-wing philosophies that target Israel—and Jews by association—as a source of evil.

Feldman said she refrained from writing essays touching on the Middle East out of fear of being branded a pro-Israel bigot or “pro-colonialism.” Conversations she’s had with Jewish students stuck in classes with professors justifying the Hamas massacres, are deeply unnerving.

“Thank G-d I’m no longer on campus,” Feldman reflected to the interviewer. “I don’t think I’d be able to sit in the same room with someone who wants me dead.”

*

American Colleges Unmasked

Columbia, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania are all under investigation by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights over complaints that their administrations have not adequately responded to rising antisemitism.

“The furor over antisemitism on campus is a rare and welcome example of accountability at American universities. But it won’t amount to much if the only result is the resignation of a couple of university presidents,” asserted a WSJ op-ed.

“The great benefit of last week’s performance by three elite-school presidents before Congress is that it tore the mask off the intellectual and political corruption of much of the American academy,” the article said.

“The world was appalled by the equivocation of the academic leaders when asked if advocating genocide against Jews violated their codes of conduct. But the episode merely revealed the value system that has become endemic at too many prestigious schools.”

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‘Deafening Silence’ Evokes Silent Complicity in Nazi Era

Last week’s explosive congressional hearing occurred just after an equally electrifying press conference, where House Republicans hosted Jewish students from many of the universities that have seen an alarming rise in antisemitism, The Hill reported.

“In 2023 at NYU, I hear calls to ‘gas the Jews,’ and I am told that ‘Hitler was right,’” Bella Ingber, a junior at NYU, told those in attendance.

“Since Oct. 7,” Ingber said, “the anti-Semitism I’ve experienced on campus is reminiscent of the Jew-hatred I’ve heard about from my grandparents, Holocaust survivors who experienced first-hand the deafening silence of their neighbors in Poland and Germany when the Nazis first rose to power.”

“70 percent of MIT Jewish students polled, feel forced to hide their identities and perspectives,” MIT graduate student Talia Kahn told the lawmakers. “This is not just harassment. This is our lives on the line,” added Kahn, who is also president of the MIT Israel Alliance.

She said she felt “immersed in an extremely toxic anti-Semitic atmosphere,” at MIT. “I was forced to leave my study group for my doctoral exams halfway through the semester because my group members told me that the people at the Nova music festival deserved to die because they were partying on stolen land.”

In an interview with Free Beacon, Talia Kahn shared that the school’s interfaith chaplain publicly threatened Jewish students; that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) staff claimed Israel has no right to exist; and that faculty told students that if they are scared, they should “just go back to Israel.”