This has been one of the greatest accomplishments of the current Palestinian war (aka “intifada”) against Israel, and its success, a testimony to Yassir Arafat’s genius, is one reason why the “intifada” will continue.

Palestine from the River to the Sea.

It is only a matter of time before Israel’s legitimacy, severely damaged world-wide, by the global arbiters of morality (and legion adulators of Arafat), will collapse entirely. It is only a matter of time before those myriads who currently justify suicide bombing and terror against Israelis will conclude that Israel no longer has a right to exist.

That is, if they haven’t concluded as much already.

The colleges and universities are leading the way. And the leading colleges and leading universities are in the vanguard.

So get used to it.

Or don’t. It’s up to you.

The effect is to choke off the supply of well-educated, clear-eyed middle east experts at a time when our foreign policy hierarchy desperately needs many new recruits. Imagine if, during the Cold War, instead of brilliant and patriotic Russian/Soviet/FP experts like Richard Pipes, Adam Ulam (Harvard), Wolfgang Leonhard, John Lewis Gaddis (Yale), Seweryn Bialer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Legvold (Columbia), our students had been stuck with Chomskyite professors.

The point here is what’s going on inside the classrooms. This is a national scandal with national security consequences. The Near Eastern Studies discipline needs to be reformed.

Some schools in the 30s did have quotas for Jewish admissions. I donít know about Columbia, but I imagine that if you were Jewish and able to get a spot, you would be inclined to go all out intellectually ñ strive to be a Law Review editor, etc. ñ because you were not likely going to land a job by removing employersí doubts that you could master the role of the old boy/live wire who would not cause the top firms anxieties over whether you would fit in and play the desired role. There was a lot of Judeophobia among elites in the 30s on both sides of the Atlantic ñ thatís a well-established fact among historians ñ and I imagine Jewish lawyers working within finance industry would be both undesired by certain clients and also able to serve in certain Jewish commercial niches. Memories would naturally be tinged and corroded by certain resentments of what was and was not allowed.

I agree with you that some Jews are inclined to paranoia, but frankly you cannot deny that this may not be completely irrational at times, least of all in our present world. I mean, I sometimes wonder how people continue to work, raise families, etc., in NYC, Washington, London, Tel Aviv, given all the experts who suggest it is not unlikely that one day there will be a terrorist bomb. We cannot back down or live in fear. Still, is it fair to ask, who is more deluded?

But what I really want to say in reply is that it is more than a few nutball profs who take sides against Israel. Anti-Israel sentiment (all out of proportion to the sins of that state in comparison with those of many others) is not uncommon in many universities. It serves a role for the self-righteous, would-be romantic intellectual heroes fighting powerful bad guys. I have no idea how to measure it, but it is not difficult to find if you are looking for it. Joe, you doubt the Columbia story because, I think, you fail to appreciate the fundamental irrationality of a lot about human culture. The idea of antisemitism in a heavily Jewish university is just irrational to you. Indeed it is, but, for example, you can often find Judaeophobia among Jews, not least among the left in Israeli universities today. Our rationality, to the extent we have any, has only been won through the cultural historical evolution of a humanity that first emerged as irrationally religious and sacrificial in its behaviours. And still, there remains no rationality that is not based, if you dig deep enough, on irrational ìdecisionsî and faith.

What needs to be understood is why political correctness, when taken to certain extremes, is much more likely to become antisemitism (Zionism), compared to other forms of ethnic, or even religious prejudice. Or, in other words, why is antisemitism different from, say, anti-black racism, or anti-Italianism, anti-Canadianism, etc? I think I could show you, if I had the time and your willingness to take seriously the irrational (or sacrificial), that there is a tendency inherent in todayís leftism that renews, in secular dress, the perennial western tendency to pit the Christian admonition to be born anew and imitate Christ, with the Jewish refusal to give up both the principle that G.d is unfigurable and the memory that monotheism was first discovered through a compact with the Jews. (Gansí point is that the secular left ìChristiansî have become ìIslamicî in order to renew this tension in the game of what revelation should be given paramount respect in our understanding of human truths.)

The paradox is that postmodern thought, rooted in the reaction to the victimization of the Holocaust, is, in the thought of central figures like Derrida, rather Jewish in its refusal to privilege any representation that would make a claim on the center of our shared attention. Instead, deconstuct, deconstruct, etc. But since some of us refuse to go along with the postmodern solution of acknowledging a universal humanity only through the nihilist strategy of a relativism in which all distinguishing values are considered equal and equally different, and because we remain tied to the idea that we must respect the revelatory lessons of history in which certain discoveries have happened to some and not others, e.g. to Jews, first: e.g. the discovery of monotheism, and the postmodern revelation that, under certain circumstances, there can no longer be any of the usual doubts about who is the victim and who the victimizer, the Jews and the Nazis.

But there is a price to pay for being both the paradigm monotheists and victims; in a culture obsessed with victimary thinking, you become the object of a new kind of resentment (why are the Jews never listed in the pc litany of victims, even as the rhetoric remains obsessed with the Holocaust and the Nazis?). It is all irrational, but then resentment, something fundamentally human, is also fundamentally deluded. If you havenít noticed that the postmodern academy is, in the humanities and much of the social sciences, based on privileging resentments and their attendant delusions, it is because you have been much smarter than some of us and have made your career in the non-utopian, grounded, and rational discipline of the law.

You are absolutely right, it occurred in the Sixties. There was, in essence, a great religious transformation of Western society which occurred in the Sixties, comparable in its way to the Great Awakening itself. The religious transformation was aided and abetted by the newfound abundance of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and all the other good stuff. There’s a reason that the Catholic church has been using drugs and music for ages (and some would say there’s a pretty heavy sexual component there too).

The new religion born in the Sixties places Social Justice as mediated by the State in the exalted throne of God. The highest goal attainable by an individual–the new purpose of life itself–is to further the “cause” of social justice. This is done through politics. “Social justice”, like “God”, is an undefined term. You must have faith you see. Just do what the other believers are doing.

The professors who came of age during the Sixties, the young converts to the new faith, entered the academy for political, not academic, purposes. Political action for social justice is their religion. They must be politically involved. This is as necessary to them as that Muslims of a certain ilk must convert non-believers at the point of a bomb.

Krugman is an outstanding example of the type. A brilliant economist, he has jettisoned his interests in that direction, because Truth is not his God, nor is Science, but rather Social Justice.

A recent study showed that whatever music was prevalent in our youth is the music that we prefer throughout our lives. No doubt the same thing is true of our religious proclivities.

It seems to me that the new religion, in the grand scheme of things, is a pretty weak religion, one destined to pass rather quickly from the scene. When all is said and done, fighting for ever greater federal largesse in the form of free pills for old people isn’t really a very life-sustaining faith, particularly in times of serious crisis. That is why I believe more and more of these worshippers of Social Justice will turn elsewhere, possibly to Islam, for some real religious sustenance.

In a larger sense, I wonder when it became necessary for faculty to be political crusaders. Is there no place for pure scholarship? What is the university environment for, if not to provide a refuge where unworldly and unprofitable scholarship can be pursued. Why isn’t the ivory tower just that?

Of course, I know when this happened. It was the 60’s, the era of relevance. I thought it was a bad idea then, and still think so now.

Are there leftist academics, most associated with Middle Eastern Studies, who make anti-semetic statements? Sure, no doubt. Maybe even a few members of the English department who think that “both sides are equally to blame” for the current situation in the Middle East? You bet.

But Columbia University — Columbia University — a “republic of fear?!?” Give me a break.

What are some of the other hotbeds of anti-Semitism? Yeshiva? Brandeis? Bar-Ilan?

I know paranoia when I see it. And this is paranoia.

And I don’t believe that things have changed, either. Not in eight years. NYU has only recently become a top five law school. For many years, it was a crappy local school. Back in the 60’s and 70’s, a bunch of rich alums gave it like $1 billion which the law school used to improve itself in the rankings.

The dean used to say that the alums had become so wealthy and successful because “back in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, Columbia wouldn’t admit Jews,” so they all went to NYU. I believed him until one day I had to get an old Columbia Law Review article from the 1930’s. I happened to see the first page, which contained the names of the editors. I started looking for the name of a family friend who had attended the school at about that time. I was surprised to discover that the names of the law review editors were like 2/3 Jewish. And there was hardly a Creighton Witherspoon III to be found. The dean’s tale of “discrimination” in the old days was just BS. Was there discrimination in Ivy League schools in the 30’s? Yes. But it was blown all out of proportion.

I am confident that the “anti-Semitism” at Columbia today is being similarly exaggerated. A few nutball Arab professors take sides against Israel, and maybe there is an occasional demonstration, but that is it.

As for Dershowitz, he is one of those people whose entire universe centers around Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn. He is aware that there is a wider world out there but wants absolutely nothing to do with it. He will obsess over anti-Semitism on Ivy League campuses until the cows come home.

There is anti-Semitism in the Middle East. There is anti-Semitism in Europe. There is still some anti-Semitism among ordinary Americans, though great progress has been made. In the great scheme of things, there is ZERO anti-Semitism at Columbia University and anyone who claims that there is engaging in hysterics and wasting everyone’s time.

A distinction without a difference, maybe. I may have a tendency to see it this way because of my own experiences – to me it looks like the same strain that was current when I was an undergraduate – Blacks can’t be racist, etc. Failure to condemn it feels like “don’t blame the victim”, which really means “don’t blame members of the designated victim group”. Muslims can’t be blamed for spewing the vile bile, because they have “designated victim” status.

Those who hold these views feel quite comfortable tarring whole groups with the victim and oppressor labels, and the Palestinians are one group of high-status designated victims. The US and Israel are high-status perpetual oppressors, of course – the US inescapably so for a long time to come, the Israelis so long as they are more powerful than the neighbors who hate them, try to kill them, and end up dead. Perhaps an inescapable position as well, short of national suicide.

What is remarkable to me is the fact that this obviously flawed victim/oppressor dichotomy has such currency among those who really ought to be able to think their way through to a more realistic position. Do these people think Bush sees the world in black and white?

I can see that particular people might be blinded in particular cases due to emotional involvement, identification with one group or another, whatever. I may be somewhat blind to really unethical behavior on the part of the US, for example. But how can an entire group of people wind up with such a blatantly cockeyed view across a whole range of victim groups of which they are not part?

It’s very strange. My only thought is that they are defining the victims by reference to a small group of oppressors – any group in conflict with the oppressors is automatically the victim.

I’m thinking out loud (in plain sight?), now. I’ll leave it at that.

My daughter went to Johns Hopkins, which doesn’t inflict this nonsensee on undergraduates. It is joining the Ivy League, which means they have to substantially relax their grading standards. But it doesn’t cause the importation of PC’ness.

Regarding home schooling… an OBGYN friend of mine was on the resident selection committee for a local hospital. She discovered that every doctor who had survived their selection process had been home schooled.

My mother, a mathematician, engineer and then public school teacher, insisted that none of her grandchildren go to public schools. A greater percentage of public school teachers than the rest of the parents in their area send their kids to private schools. However, it is clear that magnet programs can be good.

Joe Schmoe, it may be hard for you to believe that Columbia could be this bad, but it is. I was at a lecture given by Alan Dershowitz two weeks ago where he singled out Columbia as one of the worst universities in the country with respect to open hostility toward its Jewish students. He stated that there is not one Columbia professor who will stand up and defend the Jewish students on campus.