AMERICAN CAMPUSES INCREASINGLY RESEMBLE PRE-WWII GERMAN CAMPUSES - Intersectionality has resulted in the same exclusionary policies as German academia in pre-WWII.

By: Joseph Puder

Friday, February 9, 2024

American campuses today resemble in multiple ways those of pre-Nazi Germany’s campuses in the 1920’s. In pre-WWII German academia, professors preached national salvation notions and invoked ideas of “spiritual revival” rather than promoting skeptical empiricism. The national or spiritual revival, which began in the 1920’s soon after WWI. They promoted the exclusion of Jews and the labeling of Jews as a “foreign,” non-German, and as “non-Aryan” element. Today’s “intersectionality” on American campuses similarly excludes Jews.

The term “intersectionality” coined in the late 1980’s postulates that various forms of oppression, such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and homophobia are all interconnected. Inclusionary intersectionality could be a positive force absent its antisemitic prejudice. The current intersectionality is, however, more reminiscent of Nazi exclusionary discourse in that it divides people and targets, in particular, Jews and supporters of Israel.

In 2017, three Jewish women carrying a rainbow flag with a Jewish star were ejected from the Chicago Dyke March. The Jewish women were told by the march organizers that their flag resembled the Israeli flag because of the Star of David, and that symbol makes people feel unsafe. The same Dyke March organizers later tweeted, “Queer and Trans anti-Zionist Jewish folk are welcome.” Thus, you can only be part of an intersectionality forum if you are anti-Israel and by logical extension anti-Jewish.

Much like in Hitler’s Germany, Jewish students on American campuses have reported feeling unwelcome in certain social justice coalitions. Anti-Israel students have become the gatekeepers for campus coalitions, citing intersectionality as the basis for excluding Jewish students. In recent years, intersectionality has become a weapon to be used against anyone who has a connection to Israel and/or is sympathetic to its existence, which really means Jews, even those Jews who are critical of Israeli policies. In the end, identity trumps ethical considerations.

In 1922, German students threatened to riot at the Berlin University if the university held a memorial service for the murdered German foreign minister Walter Rathenau because he was a Jew. Similarly, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Brown University managed to get transgender activist, Janet Mock, to cancel her scheduled speech at Hillel by invoking the intersectionality vocabulary, which categorized Hillel as racist. According to SJP, Hillel International has a policy of supporting “Israel’s racist and colonial policies.” Janet Mock exhibited the same cowardice as the Berlin University authorities did by submitting to the antisemitism of the students.

The Students for Justice in Palestine share the same antisemitic sentiments as the German students of the 1920’s, under the guise of anti-Zionism. Conditions on US campuses, particularly the Ivy League universities, have become impossible for Jewish students as a Jewish student tearfully explained: “We are exhausted, and we’re beleaguered and no one seems to understand.” University administrators have failed their Jewish students, staff, and faculty by allowing unrestrained antisemitic agitation and, sometimes violence.

Once again, these actions bring to mind the situation on German campuses during Germany’s Weimar Republic. In 1927, under the chancellorship of Wilhelm Marx, the government withdrew recognition from the Deutsche Studentenschaft because of its support for violence, mostly against Jewish students. But it had no effect, since there was no resolute action compelling the universities to curb the student thugs. Furthermore, when the pro-Nazi antisemitic student groups demanded that universities remove Jewish faculty members, the universities complied.

These days, fear of imposing censorship on hate speech by American university presidents, who cite First Amendment rights, have allowed the free circulation on campus of Holocaust denial and invocation of White privilege to dismiss antisemitism, and the rejection of the Jewish people’s inalienable right to self-determination.

At countless Ivy League campuses it is not only the students who display intolerance and hate, but also members of the faculty as well. Many “progressive” faculty members do not accept and respect Israel as a bona fide nation state. These professors display double-standards when it comes to Israel in the most revealing way. They eagerly denounce Israeli “transgressions” with signed protest letters, but stay silent over China’s treatment of the Uighurs, Turkey and Iran’s persecution of the Kurds, Assad’s butchery of his fellow Syrians, and the Hezbollah terror organization’s assassination campaign against independent Lebanese journalists and the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.

This reporter recalled one of his political science professors pointing out, when challenged on his anti-Israel stance: “We expect from Israel a different standard.” So Arab regimes can murder and persecute with impunity, but Israel’s self-defense, in the face of Palestinian terror and promise of annihilation, must be condemned. This is a prime example of the double-standards that Israeli human right activist, author, and former Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, termed antisemitism.

The failings of these professors as described above are shaping the political mindset of young and impressionable students on American campuses. They are fostering a climate that increasingly resembles the anti-Jewish hate, violence, and intolerance exhibited by German students and faculty towards their Jewish colleagues in the 1920’s.

Fox News reported (February 5, 2024) that Alan M. Garber, the recently appointed interim president of Harvard university, pledged to tackle what he described as “pernicious” antisemitism on the Ivy League campus. He voiced concern about self-censorship among students and faculty, who fear antisemitic reactions. Garber revealed that Harvard’s newly formed taskforce is focused on addressing “social shunning” as a prominent manifestation of antisemitism on campus. However, until such time as decisive action against antisemitism on American campuses takes place, the situation on US campuses will resemble that of pre-Nazi Germany.