The present at Columbia and other Elite Colleges
We all watch events at colleges and universities with a measure of alarm. Yes, while it is clear that American speech laws are very elastic, more so than in Germany, for example, the reality is that we are quickly reaching the edges of speech laws. We may be crossing into incitement or worse. So, I want to do a somewhat historic dive because it is precisely at colleges that what we call active measures seem to have the most dramatic effect. Let me clarify: we call it active measures, and we call all of it disinformation, but in reality, it is old-fashioned propaganda.
It is also the embrace by academia, in particular the Liberal Arts and history professors, of some ideas that they transform into a theory of everything. These days, it is the postmodern world, where facts are replaced with context and oppressor-oppressed ideology. These are nothing more than facile explanations of the world, where Colonialism becomes the explanation of all ills. In its most extreme form, it seeks to destroy the modern liberal order and the United States.
As I wrote about this crisis, I was there when Jaques Derrida and Michelle Foucault entered academic discourse. They were not supposed to be a theory of everything but a way to approach things like understanding the Mexican Inquisition in its last days during the Mexican War of Independence. This is precisely how I used the Archeology of Knowledge. by Foucault. It was not about discussing the Inquisition in the present context or how it explains the relationship between the United States and Mexico.
When a Columbia professor early on said about October 7, well, it depends on the context; that is precisely what she was doing. She was applying postmodern thought to an offensive action by Hamas. In effect, she was defending terrorism. It was alarming. And it got me thinking: what is going on? Because this is hardly unprecedented. I believe it is essential to ask why toxic ideologies easily penetrate colleges.
American Speech Laws
The United States has pretty elastic speech laws. This confuses people who don’t live in the United States because what is obvious hate speech under, oh, German Law is protected speech in the United States. This is how we can have young people, their faces covered, telling Jewish students to go back to Poland and Belarus. And while one interpretation of this is pretty chilling, and it is probably true in a few cases, good luck proving it in court. This is that they are telling these young Jews to go back to the camps and killing fields of the bloody borderlands of Europe.
It is coded enough that no District Attorney would file charges for this. Proving it, unless the person uttering it says so, would be next to impossible. Moreover, as despicable and chilling as this is, it is still protected speech. So we are at a point where we need to ask, why colleges? The first reason is that our pretty elastic speech laws, more so than in places that have seen more recent genocides, allow for this, hence why we need a deep dive. Because every one of our enemies takes advantage of this to advance pretty un-American speech on our campuses, this repeats, like clockwork, every few generations.
One reason is that we do not learn from history. It is a defect in how we think about this. We tend always to look forward and believe that collective memory will protect us. Never mind, it never does.
Enter Nazi Germany
On the way to the Second World War, we saw a lot of German propaganda inside and outside American colleges. Some of the scenes we see now were also part of that past. Jews were persecuted and harassed, while students asked college administrators to remove them from public life. Some of the objectives of German propaganda in American colleges will sound very familiar to you and me. Realize this is exactly what Russia has been doing as well:
1.- Broadcast a positive image of Nazi Germany.
2.- Consolidate the support of German Americans.
3.- Create divisions between Americans.
4.- In case of war, prevent them from joining the conflict at all costs.
Today, we see parallels to all four of Russia's goals. We all can remember the wonders of Russia Today. We can also see the penetration of Russian propaganda into the halls of Congress. However, what Germany did was recreated by other enemies of the United States in decades to come.
American colleges hosted German speakers, and German clubs were used to spread the ideology of the Third Reich and to divide Americans. This particular quote from the paper I am using is exactly what is going on right now:
A recurring idea raised by German exchange students was that “young people would be the ones to build international understanding and avoid war.” At a weeklong camp at Neustrelitz, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) reminded exchange students that they represented Nazi Germany and “true understanding can only be built on mutual knowledge of peoples and their mutual respect.”
Hence, we find ourselves at an interesting point because there are parallels. The German Bundt and other civil organizations were a clear and present danger within the country on the way to war. We have this via Time Magazine, and it should sound very familiar to our modern ear:
Plenty of the story’s beats have modern counterparts. For example, the Foreign Agents Registration Act that ensnared Paul Manafort was a product of that time. Hart’s book also covers controversy over whether those with extreme political views should be allowed to speak on college campuses, a debate that still rages today. The most interesting parallel to Hart himself is that between the type of social-media misinformation campaigns that popped up around the 2016 election and the use of propaganda by Nazi agents in the United States. (In one remarkable incident, a German agent and a sympathetic congressional aide were able to take advantage of franking privileges — free mailing services available for Congressional communication with constituents — to distribute amassive amount of official-looking propaganda.) In both cases, one major goal of those involved was simply to create a situation in which Americans weren’t sure what to believe. The takeaway, he says, is that the effect of unreliable news may be more important than the actual content of those stories.
We have, entirely on purpose, forgotten about much of that history. We have also ignored how it affected Jewish students as well. First off, there were quotas back then. Second, universities hosted pro-Nazi speakers or, quite frankly, German officials who were Nazis. Why? It was one massive influence operation.
In parallel to the present, this screencap summarizes what happened at Harvard when one of these people came to campus. This was Ernst Hanftaegel, Nazi Party foreign press chief.
Now, I highlight this particular section for a reason. Even though people should be able to protest freely, that benefit was not granted to the counter-protestors. In a way, this is happening today. College officials tell Jewish students to stay indoors, and Professor Shai Davidai, who works at the Columbia Business School, is no longer allowed on Campus.
He asked us to center the Jewish students who are afraid. So I will. He got this from some of these young people. I am attaching the file as well:
I just got an email from an Israeli student at @Columbia.
Don’t listen to me. Listen to them:
“Dear Shai,
I am writing to you as a concerned Israeli student at Columbia University, along with 133 fellow Israeli students. On April 23rd at 8:00 AM, we addressed a letter to President Shafik, Co-Chair Shipman, and Co-Chair Greenwald, expressing our fears about our safety on campus and the critical need for immediate action. I have attached the letter for your reference. We are reaching out because we believe that our concerns are being neglected by the university administration, and we recognize the significant role that the media is playing in these recent events. We fear further escalation of violence on campus and want to ensure that our voices are heard and that preventive measures are taken to safeguard all students. We believe that increased media attention can help bring about the necessary changes and hold the university accountable for ensuring a safe environment for everyone.
The letter above is history repeating itself. These young people are experiencing something my father knew well in Poland. Before he died, he told me some of the stories.
First, let me recognize the Mozolewsky family. One reason I am here is the father of my dad’s classmate, bench mate, who decided at significant personal risk to hide them after the war came to Knishyn. That is the hamlet my father came from. If you have ever watched Fiddler on the Roof, the fictional Anatevka in modern-day Ukraine, you will find that it has much in common with Knishyn.
Here is the record at Yad Vashem of the Polish family that hid my family.
We met Dyonizy Mozolewski decades later in Poland after the fall of the USSR. We kept a friendship.
So why am I bringing family history into this? Antisemitism, Jew-hatred, is old. My dad wanted to be a doctor but barely finished Junior High. His family saw the hate rise in that town. He spoke of how classmates suddenly became tormentors of Jewish kids. He spoke of having to fight them in the streets. This was before the Germans came to town in the Summer of ‘41.
He had to do things to survive. These are things that many of us are protected from by the thinnest of margins, by modern civility. A lesson is that the veneer of civilization will disappear in a second.
The students Professor Davidai is talking to are also highlighting their personal family history and trauma. One told Davidai this is why he does not want to go to class on Zoom:
“Because in 1940 my great grandmother stopped going to school. She was living in Belgium at the time, and she had to stop going to school. And after she stopped going to school, she could never go back. She lost all her family and had to build her life after the war.”
That story is familiar to many Jews who have a history of persecution. Before you say it, but that was Europe. Let me close this with a story of Egypt. This is also familiar to similar themes we are watching develop in American colleges, businesses, and general Jewish life:
As an Egyptian Jew, Pesach is my favorite holiday. It is the time when the kids and I get to watch the Prince of Egypt on repeat throughout the Chag. But, this year, I want to tell you a story.
Many years ago, a Jewish young man who grew up in Cairo lived through what we are all experiencing today.
His father had inherited his grandfather’s successful business. The family was wealthy, healthy, and happy. They lived in a beautiful house in Cairo, where the sun is always shining. The kids went to a nice French school. They had a community, a thriving shul and they went to Alexandria for the summer holiday.
But, all of a sudden everything changed.
His classmates turned into bullies, ganging up on the Jewish kid. He complained to his parents. They thought it was just a one-off, but nonetheless complained to the headteacher, hoping they would address it. The teachers were initially indifferent, and later increasingly complicit.
The parents thought it was perhaps time to look for another school. Hopefully, a more tolerant one. Then their neighbours and friends from shul started reporting similar incidents. Then, Jewish shops were attacked.
The police, too, were indifferent. No matter how many police reports the community filed, nothing was being done to protect them. Then the police started harassing them, subjecting them to 24/7 monitoring, questioning them on who they were seeing, doing business with, and, finally, visiting them and making calls in the early hours of the morning demanding they leave Egypt.
Within months, members of their shul and immediate community left everything behind. Their Egyptian passports and property were confiscated. Any attempts to sell their businesses and transfer the money to another country, in an attempt to build up some savings to help them start again somewhere else, was seen as a deliberate attempt to sabotage Egypt’s economy. They were suddenly stateless, homeless and heartbroken. Some headed to Israel, others to the US, many to France and the UK. It didn’t really matter. Nothing was ever the same again.
Within years, Egypt’s proud Jewish community was no more. Synagogues abandoned. The world’s second-oldest Jewish cemetery in Cairo Al-Basatin neighbourhood, across the road from where I went to school for one year, vandalised for decades. This was the second, arguably the last, Exodus of Jews from Egypt and the Arab world. Today, there are almost six Jews left in Egypt, mostly elderly women who want to die at home.
I am horrified at the thought that we might be experiencing the same kind of persecution. All the signs are there. It always starts with indifference and ends with everyone playing a part, picking on Jews, harassing Jews, making life harder for kids in school, and university, laughing at Jews while they suffer, and making the streets of our cities hostile to Jews…until a moment comes when we decide to leave, and start over somewhere else. Everyone should be grateful that Israel exists today, but we should never let that happen.
P.S: the Basatin cemetery is undergoing its first-ever restoration, thanks to President Sisi’s government.
Then, there are stories about Yemen and Iran after the revolution. Many Jews left Iran, a community that was formed under King Cyrus. That’s nearly ancient by any historical standards. The tombs of Queen Esther and Mordechai exist to this day. Yes, there are still Jews left there, but they better watch what they say or think. I could go into Lebanon, Iraq, and Libya, but the list is long.
I started this with the ten thousand-foot level because those patterns repeat repeatedly in the US. Whether that is Germany, the Soviet Union, Qatar and Iran, or modern-day Russia. Our elastic speech laws are both a blessing and a problem. They allow for a formidable marketplace of ideas and a corrosive attack on these precise liberal values.
I chose to end this where that high-level history comes in contact with young people. American Jewish students are not used to this. After the Second World War, we kept most of this toxicity out. I grew up in a country where you found that ancient hate if you dug a little. Welcome to a historical norm. This is precisely what I feared after October 7.
I will remind you that the pro-Palestinian, truly Pro-Hamas marches started the day after. They are coordinated. The fact that all tents in college encampments look the same is a massive clue that they are. I expect the feds to be looking into this part of the story. After all, as of November, the administration has been looking into this.