There is a professor at my college doing actual antisemitism (Leo Frank trutherism) in the name of "anti-Zionism," and I know if I tried to make it an issue, I would be feeding into the very worst right-wing voices who want to shut me and my mostly good institution down, too, so I have no recourse.
So you're basically following in the footsteps of the Gernan people who figured it was better to stay silent. Courage in the face of fear is not an easy thing but we are being left with no choice. Speak up or surrender are your only two choices.
I was hoping this was a bot, but “Gernan” tells me you’re just a fool.
How so? Does my opinion offend you?
Either I’m wrong and I’m talking to a bot, or you’re real but have that special combo of bad reading comprehension and stridency. Both lead to the same end, though: This is boring and a waste of time.
Yes, you must be much smarter than me. How could I have thought otherwise? Former lawyer and former journalist. You must have been a pleasure to work with.
Ok, fine. It’s really easy for you to go on the internet and call someone a “fellow traveler” for not taking a stand, but you completely ignore his explanation of why doing so would in fact be counterproductive. This is called “choosing your battles.”
It’s absurd that you’d presume to have a better understanding of this situation than the person in it. The fact that you’re attacking a Jewish professor of religion for his judgement on navigating antisemitism in a university setting is, shall we say, beyond the pale.
Do you have a non-Jewish colleague you could tap in on this? Because I completely understand why you don’t want to start anything, but it sucks if nobody calls them out.
The problem of the right-wing attack on the university doesn't change if a non-Jewish person calls it out though
But who does the calling out does affect the response or at least how it is regarded. Allies have a type of authority to intervene (epistemically and practically) in ways the directly affected don’t, plus they can often take the blowback more easily. No guarantees, but doing nothing also sucks.
evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/howtrumpandn... The mistake is in thinking Zionism can reduce anti-semitism.
To stay silent about antisemitism because power might exploit your honesty is still a lie. Lucidity compels speaking out, even if no one is innocent at the end of the day.
Ppl need to call them out, whether you or someone else. Leo Frank trutherism is reprehensible—can’t fathom how they connect it to antizionism (a word I abhor anyway). That we all now walk on eggshells is a sign of how poor a job has been done in promoting civil discourse: extremists are winning.
Okay, but what about the zugzwang problem here?
IDK how to answer that well (& had to google zugswang, a good word, btw). I think when these moments arise, we have to just say what is, sans apology, equivocation, agendas: whether answering Congress hyenas' insidious Q's or taking on Leo Frank truthers, calling it straight up & down is needed.
I agree in principle, but we have entered a new era and it now requires us to choose our battles more strategically. Alas, this kind of problem isn’t new from the POV of many other groups who aren’t both white and Christian.
You can put a Kick Me Sign on his back!
Why can't you take it to admin? In normal times I can see that being unsatisfactory given their tendency to sweep shit under the rug but right now I think your goals are largely collinear. You both want it to stop and you both want to keep it quiet.
Because the professor in question would likely raise a stink about being "canceled" and "academic freedom being attacked" by the administration. There's a whole industry of right wing grievances amplifiers out there looking for exactly that complaint by conservatives at colleges to latch on to.
That's a reasonable fear but it should be the Admin's to grapple with, not an individual professor's. Shit like this is their job and if they elect to punt due to what you've described then it's on their conscience.
The administration has no ability to stop a right wing pile-on or the professor in question from starting it, except to do nothing and hope word of the complaint doesn't leak out. And even standing firm against said pile-on can damage the institution in other ways.
Which is OP's point I believe: even if the administration does the right thing the risk of institutional damage is high, and no action they take as an individual leads to a good outcome for the institution or themselves.
I think this is a bit defeatist, it's not preordained that the professor will not be silently pressured by admin nor that there will be mass right wing support for the professor. I think you're right that it's a reasonable fear but again it should be one the admin should have to grapple with.
In the event that there is a counter-reaction, admin is better able to withstand it as well. Regardless, I think the OP should tell admin to personally relieve themselves of the quandary. It doesn't necessarily solve the wider problem but it does solve the personal one of "should I do something?"
Just do it. You can’t just sit around and tolerate racism/adjacent just because the right wing will make a big deal about it. I hope that guy gets fired. If people don’t want the right wing to have the ammo then clean the damn house.
Unfortunately, optics mattering isn’t a new phenomenon.
I feel that if people truly cared about optics that having a bunch of anarchist asshats running around being hostile to members of a minority ethnic group was maybe, as they like to say, “not a good look”. Where the hell are the adults?
Being antisemitism pilled by rightwing bullshit masked as leftwing bullshit.
You've written this, so you have already made it an issue. The principle is, antisemitism is wrong. Who is doing it is, who might exploit it for political reasons, are irrelevant. Stick to the principle on your terms. Although easy to say given you will no doubt be subject to social ostracism.
soon, the only remedy to this worth pursuing will be: 1. get 6 friends together 2. everyone bring a sock 3. you all go to the bank and get $10 worth of nickles 4. etc etc
Wow. Way smarter to use nickels than quarters. This is gonna save me a fortune!
theninthcandle.com
And the bitter thing is that it was the right-wing Zionists who labeled everything and everyone who criticized them as anti-Semitic.
In pre-Trump times, I could say that this is making the campus environment less safe. But in the age of Trump and using “campus antisemitism” to shut down the university and deport students, I am severely limited in what I can do in response, which is actually a force multiplier for antisemitism.
I think in this case what you need is a non-Jewish anti-Zionist ally to call out the Leo Frank truther for antisemitism, lying, & all-around assholery. Is one available?
On a certain level, it is amazing that, before this administration, it would not have been enough to say, "Professor A is doing anti-semitism, which Leo Frank trutherism definitely is" and have that be enough. A lot of problems seem to have started with "X is making Y environment less safe."
this euphemistic safetyist language was already a concession to the anti-woke right…and it only made things worse
I don't think it was meant to be a concession by its originators. I think there was this idea that you can't define what a "racist" or "antisemite" is so it's better not to define it. Oops! Turns out "truth" has some practical benefits.
Yep the retreat from naming specifics (sexism, antisemitism, etc) toward more abstract affects (“feeling safe, included”) was an ultimately botched attempt to be neutral or nonpartisan, but this retreat was a response to r-w attacks.
Partly, but do you think it had no relationship at all to academic ideas about the slipperiness of truth?
I see what you mean notice that the concepts of “threat,” “safety” and “harm” emanate from the discourse accompanying title 9, affirmative action, and so on.
I agree with you though that academic post-structuralist theories of truth did not offer many resources to respond to the trend effectively. OTOH: the legal scholars who did Critical Race Theory (not the propaganda version) predicted that facially neutral anti discrimination norms would be coopted
That's interesting. I did not know that.
As we are seeing now in so many ways, "making an environment less safe" is basically meaningless and can be used by anyone for any reason. The development of this terminology IMO was not exactly great for the university.
Reposting to correct a couple of errors: I'm not saying it's easy, but since at least 10/7, and admittedly as an outsider for a while, I have been driven crazy by universities' inability to develop a way to say, "don't me a racist/sexist/antisemitic asshole" in more direct language.
I very strongly agree with this... the language of "safety" that was adopted by much of the left created a language of safety that the right has now adopted wholesale in response, so that Leo Frank trutherism and saying "Free Palestine" can be conflated if they make Jewish students "feel unsafe."
{head desk}
And too many people on the left have decided to say students are lying about feeling unsafe if they hear "Free Palestine," but I actually don't think so, and anyway that isn't really the point... the point is, we need a metric for assessing bigotry that is not just how it makes someone feel.
YES YES YES YES. The canary in the coal mine for this was the Amy Wax situation and the idea that there was no way to say she was racist outside: 1) whether she might tank the grades of people of color; 2) how her outrageous statements made people feel.
I mean as Black faculty we already tried to warn about how this “feeling unsafe” rhetoric could get coopted…
Serious question: starting when? I really am curious. I'm a PhD but haven't been in academia in a while.
As a rule black men are aware of how people "not feeling safe" in our presence can get weaponized, I'd say.
Even "since she's been recorded saying, 'Black people are less intelligent than white people,' it's reasonable to assume she may not grade Black students fairly" was an attempt to say something logical and evidence-based, which is more than one could say for most other discussions of campus racism.
(I imagine the answer is she's a narcissist who got supply from those people when she desperately needed it, but IDK)
Her situation is baffling. How do you as a Jewish woman with an MD and JD from top schools wind up as an alt-right gutter bigot?
Honestly, I don't care. I just want her tenure revoked. And though I think tenure is an important protection, it shouldn't have been so hard to even consider revoking it in her case.
Well, yeah. And I hope she gets run over by an eighteen-wheeler. What the Soviets did to East Germans wasn't great, but it did spook them out of fascism for a couple of generations.
That does seem like a terrible quandary.
I have been thinking about this issue more broadly - there are a not-zero number of right-wing caricatures of left-coded organizations/institutions that are mostly wrong about most of those places, but slightly right about a subset. But if you say that publicly you reinforce the mostly-BS claims.
And also, since so many people making those claims/critiques are doing it with hostile intent, even raising the issue makes it seem like you're siding with the bad guys.
איין אומגליק איז פֿאַר אים ווייניק
Secondary (at most) point but: Leo Frank trutherism? Really? I have so many questions.
Would it be hopeless to think you might talk to this person? Or, better yet, is there someone they might see as having unimpeachable pro-Palestine bona fides whom you know who could talk to them and say hey, that’s not right & it’s bad for our cause?
I think the latter is a good plan.
I can’t say too much but I will say that, unfortunately, assuming that this person has any earnest investment in Palestine aside from the extent to which they can use the issue for performative self-aggrandizement is giving them too much credit.
Without obligation, I kindly ask if you could donate or repost the pinned post on my page to spread the word further.
The person in question may not care, but it's good for others to see this get exposed.
Their leader called lawyers shylocks and Elon did the salute