Saturday Miscellany

 First, two days ago I wrote about the situation in South Africa, especially regarding  the rank persecution of white farmers. As you recall, the Trump administration has fast-tracked their requests for refugee status, and several dozen have now relocated to the USA.

I also noted that the South African war against white farmers was likely to produce a food shortage. Now Wanjiru Nyoya explains the problem, clearly:

90% of farms seized from the Boers by the Bantu commies are lying derelict. Nobody told the Bantus that farms require hard work, so they didn't bother. This was a catastrophe for the farm animals, most of which had to be euthanized.

Second, CNN’s token conservative Scott Jennings has offered a few remarks about the negotiations between America’s Treasury Secretary and Chinese officials in Geneva. You will recall that the talks yielded an agreement to tone down the trade wars, and that the markets were thrilled to hear the news.

Jennings explained that the Chinese negotiators told Bessent that they did not need to follow the agreements made with the Biden administration because the Bidens were too weak to enforce anything:

“This whole idea that he’s weak on China, did you not read the news about what Secretary Bessent found out in these meetings, that during the Biden Administration the Chinese officials said, ‘Yeah, we knew we could ignore Biden. We could ignore whatever agreements we had because he was too weak and would never, ever stand up to us or stop us,’” Jennings said. “Now they’ve been drug to the table by a strong American president. 

It was another story in Geneva:

And for all the talk from China, from Beijing, ‘Oh, we’re going to outlast the Americans. We’re fortified to outlast the Americans,’ a few days into this, they’re in Switzerland cutting the beginnings of a deal that‘s going to be good for the United States, admitting some of the things that they have to admit in order to get a more balanced situation with us.”

As we have noted, Bessent is quickly becoming a star of the administration. As Trump opined the other day, every time Scott is on the air the markets go up:

“This is a total win for the president, and it’s a total win for the rock star Scott Bessent, who goes overseas and pulls an amazing rabbit out of a hat,” Jennings continued. “But do not forget, they told him, ‘We ignored Biden because he was so weak and we could afford to do it.’”

Third, it feels almost redundant at this point. If you have not figured this one out, you need some serious time off.

The issue is what is euphemistically called “gender affirming care.” About which Dani Activist has this to say:

They call it “gender-affirming care.” But real care doesn’t sterilize confused teens. Real care doesn’t amputate healthy body parts. Real care doesn’t trap people in lifelong medical dependence. Call it what it is: mutilation disguised as compassion.

Fourth, the news from the Supreme Court. Not about the cases but about one of the justices. Charlie Kirk explained:

A Supreme Court expert friend responding to today's oral arguments: "KBJ really is stunningly stupid in ways you cannot exaggerate."

Fifth, if you thought that DEI was going to disappear off the face of the planet, you were too optimistic. Take the case of the Palo Alto, CA school district. They have canceled advanced and honors courses, because of racial disparities.

Nellie Bowles reports on TGIF, from the Free Press:

Palo Alto Unified School District voted to remove honors biology as an option for the smart kids, after already having removed honors English, lest some advanced reader get to talk to other advanced readers (on this I support Palo Alto wholeheartedly). 

It was such a bad idea that even Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna spoke out against it:

“They call it de-laning,” said Silicon Valley congressman Ro Khanna. “I call it an assault on excellence. I took many honors classes at Council Rock High in PA.”

Bowles offered her own explanation:

Being somewhat familiar with Palo Alto, a wealthy, highly competitive school district, let me tell you what’s going on, just based on gut: The white parents are mad that the advanced classes are disproportionately Asian. And they think their kid will have a better shot at an Ivy League spot if it’s harder for the college to tell who’s smart and who is, like, really smart. But guys, colleges already will discriminate against the smart Asians. You don’t have to cancel biology to get there.

Sixth, from Rob Jenkins, on Minding the Campus, a problem students are encountering in STEM classes. Their professors are not native born, and can barely speak English.

These days, institutions have come to rely more and more on non-native Ph.D.s. Just scan through the faculty roster at any American university and see how many names you can pronounce. This is a problem for some of the same reasons Jared mentions: Not only did many of these professors take grad-school seats from American students, they eventually took jobs that might have gone to American candidates.

There’s another problem with foreign-born professors, though, on an even more basic level: Students often struggle to understand them in class. If students literally can’t grasp what the professor is saying, due to a language barrier, how can they learn the material? Often, they resort to essentially teaching themselves, using textbooks, study groups, and online aids.

It is even happening in medical school:

The daughter of a good friend is currently in medical school at a large, highly respected Southeastern university. I had a chance to chat with her over the holidays and asked her how it was going. What she said frankly shocked me.

According to her, not a single one of her medical school professors, so far, has been American-born. All speak with thick accents, although some are clearer than others. Asking questions in class doesn’t help much, because she often can’t understand the answers. And she isn’t alone. Her classmates all have the same problem.   

One agrees wholeheartedly with the observation. And yet, upon reflection, when you choose a surgeon to perform open heart surgery on you, how important is his ability to speak English?

Finally, I now have some open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, email me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

Donald of Arabia

Once upon a time-- and it was not a very good time-- a sometime intellectual by name of Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay and then a book claiming that history had ended, and that we had won.

Fukuyama had become enthralled with Hegel, and he concluded that history was a grand narrative of a struggle between liberal democracy and authoritarian totalitarianism. And that liberal democracy had won. By that he meant that the world had decided, as though of one mind, that liberal democracy was the best way to conduct government business and to structure society. 

As for liberal democracy, it comprised democratic elections, free expression, human rights and free enterprise. Authoritarian totalitarianism comprised oppression and top/down management of the economy.

It was a nice idea. It came from a big thinker, a real German philosopher. If Fukuyama had reflected more seriously he would have had to deal with the fact that Hegel was the godfather of Marxism and that applying his grandiose theorizing to practical matters had produced boundless misery.

As for whether or not the world was of one mind about the greatness of liberal democracy, a brief glance around the world, in particular, at the Muslim world did not find governments and cultures that were craving liberal democracy. Even China was not exactly embracing the virtue of democracy. Many Chinese looked at American politics and the quality of leadership we had and concluded that we could keep it to ourselves.

As for the basis for the Hegelian vision, it derived, I surmise, from Biblical eschatology. The great thinkers of the Enlightenment, according to an intellectual historian named Carl Becker, were offering a secular version of the Heavenly City, via the book of Revelation. In place of the New Jerusalem we would have liberal democracy.

Anyway, before you knew it, politicians and political theorists, on the right and the left, decided that the world needed to be converted to liberal democracy. We were going to remake the world in our image and peace and prosperity would exist for everyone everywhere.

Now, Batya Ungar-Sargon opines in the Free Press that President Trump put these eschatological musings to bed with a speech in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

But more significant than the MBS-Trump bromance was the speech Trump delivered, which denounced the failed forever wars of Republican administrations past as well as the failed appeasement of the Democrats, laying out the president’s signature strategy: peace through strength and peace through commerce as the path of the future.

We would not all be living in a grand democratic heavenly city, but would connect by doing business together. The Trump trip to the Middle East was not about selling democracy. It was not about trashing that region’s leaders for being undemocratic. It was about diplomacy via commerce.

If Obama’s speech marked one epoch, President Trump’s address marks another. One not built on the fiction of shared principles but respect for our differences and with alliances built on the unflinching, hard reality of economic partnership—even between erstwhile foes.

And also,

Throughout the peninsula, the president said, “a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos, where it exports technology, not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.”

Instead of sectarianism, Trump sees massive financial opportunity—the billions and billions of dollars to be made in a new Middle East defined not by Sunni vs. Shiite, but by OpenAI and Grok.

Trump was not telling the leaders of the Middle East that all would be well if only they would hold elections. In truth, many of these countries have been modernizing at a rapid clip, without the virtue of liberal democracy.

This new Middle East was not being built thanks to overbearing Western intervention but rather in spite of it, the president said. “It’s crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation has not come from Western interventionalists or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs,” said Trump.

She continued:

“The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits,” he [Trump] went on. “Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions, and charting your own destinies in your own way,” Trump said. “ Peace, prosperity, and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly. And it’s something only you could do. You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way.”

The opening round of diplomacy began with gestures of respect. It did not begin by looking down at people who were supposedly more primitive. And, it did not begin with a glorification of liberal democracy:

Compare this to the last Republican president prior to Trump, George W. Bush, who declared in his last State of the Union address: “We seek the end of tyranny in our world. Some dismiss that goal as misguided idealism. In reality, the future security of America depends on it.” He said, “Dictatorships shelter terrorists and feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer—so we will act boldly in freedom's cause.”

In fairness, precious few intellectuals still believe in the end of history or of the advent of worldwide liberal democracy. And yet, seeing an American president bring a new idea, a new way of working together, to the Middle East, was enlightening, to say the least.

Ungar-Sargon wrote:

Trump’s speech was a rejection of the idea, shared by Obama and Bush, that Western-style liberal democracy is essential to human flourishing in the Middle East. In Trump’s view, it can be achieved through success, security, stability, respect for a nation’s sovereignty and culture even where it differs from ours, and above all, a disgust for the regime-change wars that promised freedom and delivered death and destruction.

So Long, South Africa

Doubtless, you are familiar with the text, from Matthew 5; 43-44:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you….

The text is clear enough, but not clear enough for the grandees of the American Episcopal Church. They have introduced a variation on the theme-- love your enemies, unless they are white refugees from South Africa. Call it the limits of Christian charity, thus, of agape. 

Truth be told, if the Episcopal Church needs me to remind them of Scripture, they are seriously lost.

As for the story behind this story, it happens that white South African farmers have been subjected to abuse and harassment and worse. So, the Trump administration has opened the nation’s doors to them. As of now the number allowed into the country is in the dozens.

You would think that this would be thoroughly acceptable. American progressives, however, are up in arms against the policy. From Zero Hedge:

Case in point - The progressive reaction to Trump allowing white South African farmers to become US citizens under refugee status.  They are furious.  

The media has accused Trump of fabricating claims of racial prejudice against whites in South Africa, interviewing socialist government officials who assert that they are "confused" by the idea that whites face discrimination.  They initially stated that almost no one in South Africa was trying to leave and that a movement for whites to leave SA didn't exist.  This was a lie.  At least 10,000 white farmers rushed to get information on relocating to the US after Trump's announcement.  

Of course, none of these people belong to criminal gangs. Nevertheless, the Episcopal Church in America has chosen to respond by stopping its resettlement program.

In its words:

"In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step...Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government..."     

Of course, in the end it’s racist. 

As for the practical side of the policy, the first Afrikaners have arrived in America:

On Monday, the State Department said it had welcomed 59 Afrikaners whose applications to come to the U.S. were fast-tracked under President Donald Trump's executive order issued in February titled, "Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa." The order called on the administration to "prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement" for Afrikaners, a South African minority group descended primarily from Dutch settlers, "who are victims of unjust racial discrimination."

How bad is it for white farmers in South Africa?

In case anyone needs reminding, there is an open call among black communists in South Africa to "kill the Boers" (kill the white farmers). 

The government in South Africa has allowed blacks to confiscate the land that had been farmed by whites:

And in 2024 the SA government added insult to injury after they codified laws which allow for farmland to be taken without payment in the name of "equity".  These laws are specifically meant to redistribute land from whites to blacks. 

And yet, there is a problem. The government needs the white farmers to feed the people. Thus, it has fought any plans that would allow said farmers to move to America:

Finally, the South African government has a vested interest in demonizing the relocation of white farmers.  They hate the Afrikaners, but over 70% of all agricultural output in the country comes from white owned farms.  Without these farmers and their knowledge South Africa will collapse and starve (just as Zimbabwe did).  The government would prefer to phase out white farmers slowly and replace them with black farmers, not lose all of them at one time. 

It's called: biting the hand that feeds you.

Wednesday Potpourri

First, some fun facts in the realm of brain science. From Wesley Yang:

Autism diagnoses in Silicon Valley are 2x the baseline level because of high concentration of engineering brains. Transgender child diagnoses in Hollywood are 1000x the baseline level because of high concentration of narcissistic personality disorders.

Figure that one out. Transmania is 1000 times more prevalent in Hollywood. Apparently, in some circles it’s a social contagion. Who knew?

Second, from Molson Hart, a review of the mess that American education has become.

The most underdiscussed problem in the USA right now is education. Kids born between 2001 and 2020 are a lost generation. 

1. Distracting cell phones in school 

2. Never learned to use computers because they came of age post-iPhone 

3. Lockdowns; for 2 years many simply did not go to school 

4. And now, artificial intelligence. Why do your homework when you can snap a picture and ask ChatGPT? Why learn to read or write with AI and speech to text? 

It’s in the data. And I don’t think it’s getting better. It’s getting worse. People with the means to are increasingly homeschooling or sending their kids to private, which makes public education worse. And now the kids who got a bad education themselves, who oftentimes don’t believe in the country, are teaching their younger peers (if you were born in 2000, you’re old enough to be a teacher in 2025!). 

I’m not criticizing people for putting their kids in private. I’d do the same. And I’m not saying solving these problems is easy, from unions to underpaid teachers to cell phones being needed because of school shootings. 

What I am saying is that we need to try. Because we’re not. And if we don’t, in 10 years, 10 years of educated boomers will be replaced by 10 years of kids who can’t read and write and our country is going to be an even bigger mess than it is now.

To be fair, we have been following this story in these pages.

Third, from famed Democratic pollster Mark Penn, about whom we can certainly affirm that he is an honest man. Opining on the state of the Democratic Party, especially the AOCs and Jasmine Crocketts:

“Let’s not confuse social media leaders with real leaders. These are not the real leaders of the Democratic Party. They’re saying outlandish things. So they get on social media, and then they get picked up over here. There’s no real leader of the Democratic Party right now, in all honesty. There’s no platform. There’s no program,” Penn said.

“Maybe the Democrats will get Congress back,” Penn added. “Trump was kind of dipping a bit, but I really think he’s coming back quite strongly now because he took a risk, and that risk seems to be paying off in big ways. So I think he’s gone back to being a very formidable leader.”

Fourth, speaking of pedagogical trainwrecks, public school education in New York City is a calamity. New York’s children are among the worst performers on the SAT test.

The New York Post has the story:

New York City students scored far below the rest of the state and country on the SAT — producing the lowest average scores in at least seven years, troubling new data show.

Public school students in the Big Apple scored an average 473 on the math portion of last year’s standardized test, which is widely used for college admissions in the US. It was a whopping 71 points below the average for the rest of New York, and 32 points below that of the rest of the country.

As many have said, this is not going to get better until we ban teachers’ unions.

Fifth, Claire Cain Miller, a trustworthy source, explains in the New York Times that American boys and men are in some serious trouble. We recall that Christina Hoff Sommers identified the same problem many moons ago, in her book about the war against boys.

So, now the situation is so serious that it has made the New York Times. Miller writes:

Boys and young men are struggling. Across their lives — in their educational achievement, mental health and transitions to adulthood — there are warning signs that they are falling behind, even as their female peers surge ahead.

In the United States, researchers say several economic and social changes have combined to change boys’ and men’s trajectories. School has changed in ways that favor girls, and work has changed in ways that favor women. Boys are often seen as troublemakers, and men have heard that masculinity is “toxic.”

Young people themselves tend to agree that girls are now at least equal to — and often doing better than — boys. Many young men say they feel unmoored and undervalued, and parents and adults who work with children are worried about boys. It’s not just a feeling: There’s a wealth of data that shows that boys and young men are stagnating.

Sixth, meanwhile back in Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, successor to Mayor Lori Lightweight, has been leading his city into a ditch. There is no nice way to describe it. 

Ted Dabrowski explains:

Chicago is stuck in a vicious spiral, where too much spending has led to too much debt, including massive pension debts. Taxes, as a result, have become increasingly punitive. Pile on top of that failing schools and crime, and that’s chased out people and businesses, driving down job creation and investment. Based on the data, minorities are paying a big price relative to their peers in other big cities.

At the core of Chicago’s failure is a lack of economic growth. The metro area’s GDP, after adjusting for inflation, has grown only 4% since 2019. That’s the worst economic growth among the nation’s 15 largest metro areas. 

It’s quite the opposite for cities with pro-growth, pro-business policies. The economies of booming metros like Dallas, Seattle, Miami and Phoenix have all grown 17% or more. That’s more than four times the growth rate of Chicago.

Seventh, among those who have most vigorously opposed the Trump tariff policy is Lawrence Summers. Now that Trump has shown some flexibility about the policy, Summers is cheering, on Bloomberg:

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers applauded the Trump administration’s walk-back from what he characterized as overly aggressive trade protection measures, singling out Scott Bessent in particular for his weekend work with China.

“Many of the biggest failures in US history come from an unwillingness to pull back in the face of a mistake and to double down on the infeasible — that’s what Vietnam was about,” as well as US conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. “When you make a mistake, when you’ve done something imprudent, it’s a good idea to salvage what pride you can and to retreat.”

Now, we await the Summers admission that he was wrong about the Trump policy. Similarly, as he applauds the fine work done by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, he should mention that perhaps he was wrong to suggest that Bessent ought to resign.

Finally, I now have some free consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, contact me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

The Trouble with Young Democrats

It’s probably a slow day if you are worrying your soul about the current state of the Democratic Party. It’s even a slower day if you are tormenting yourself about the mind warp of today’s young Democrats. 

Nothing is quite as depressing as the mind of a young Democrat. If we are looking for a cogent analysis, we cannot do very much better than to turn to comedian Bill Maher. This is another way of saying that this constituency is fast becoming a national joke.

According to Maher, who opines on HBO and CNN, young Democrats have twisted their minds to the point where they embrace Hamas and hate America. 

Last Friday, Maher said this:

If the thought leaders in the Democratic Party keep encouraging and not rebuking that America is cringe and the people who run Gaza are great, the Democrats are doomed.

Of course, you might not think that this is a bad thing. And yet, the erosion of national pride is, in itself, a mental health crisis.

One can easily twist one’s mind into contortions while trying to figure out why so many young people support Hamas. One can do the same if one tries to understand why these intrepid Nazi-hunters have managed to embrace a movement that is a remnant of the Third Reich. 

Dare we say that the failure of the American educational system is on flagrant display in the number of young people who are supporting Hamas.

Dare we point out the rank stupidity of the calls for Free Palestine, when Palestinians have no real interest in establishing a free enterprise economy or even having free elections. Everyone with a minimal intelligence knows that there is no such thing as a free Muslim state in the Middle East. 

And still, both Egypt and Jordan-- the latter being a Palestinian state-- have a per capita GDP in the realm of  $4500 a year. Israel has a per capita GDP of around $55,000. 

Do your fervent Hamas supporters believe that this is the fault of the Jews? Do they recognize their own anti-Semitism when they wallow in it? If they expect that Israelis will recognize that their achievements have not been earned and that they must immediately turn Tel Aviv over to Hamas, they have been smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes.

The notion underpinning this piece of arrant stupidity has it that Israel succeeded where Jordan did not because it was exploiting Palestinians. A brief examination of the economic situation in Jordan belies this nonsense.

But, Maher is also correct to see that the problem with young Democrats is that they hate their country. This means, they feel no pride in being American. And this will likely make them depressed.

Despite what has been trafficked, the cure for depression is pride, not hope. Once you deprive people of their pride they will live their lives as though in a fictional narrative. They will set about to overthrow the system in order to restore their sense of accomplishment. In truth, they are playing a losing hand. The more you listen to them the more you understand that they are trying  to restore their pride at the expense of their nation, its achievements and accomplishments.

As for America’s flagging national pride, the sense among young people that they should not be proud of their country, it derives from Vietnam, that is, from our inability to win wars. When America won wars in the twentieth century, the nation felt pride. When we lost in Vietnam the price was national pride.

I discussed these matters in my book, Saving Face.

Maher explained it well:

But here is the dilemma for Democrats. Their young people, their key constituency, not only don’t like their own civilization, they like the wrong one. They actually think Hamas is a liberation movement. They chant for the Houthis. They’re chanting ‘We will honor our martyrs’ at Yale. They’re looking for love in all the wrong countries.”

Of course, these liberated youth should know better than to embrace a culture that follows Shariah law, that practices honor killing, wife beating and extreme homophobia. And that is certainly not democratic.

Maher said this:

“Someone needs to tell the kids that America is not the society where women basically have no rights, where there is zero freedom of religion, and where dissent is punishable by death.”

“Our democracy may be on life support, but we still have elections. They don’t.”

It takes a comedian to shed the light of reason on the debate.

He [Maher] then called out young Democratic members for supporting the catchphrase, “Globalize the Intifada,” quipping, “As if worldwide suicide bombing and cosplaying Islamic revolutionaries is the answer to our problems.”

“Liberals are weak and woke – especially the White ones – and they indulge all sorts of nonsense from their kids, a pattern that then continues on in the Democratic Party. Last election, it was all the gender stuff, the insistence that men can have babies and such. And now I fear that ‘We like the terrorists’ is the new that,” the talk show host added.

Surely, they are weak and woke. One thing they are not is: liberal. If they took their liberality to Gaza they would not survive the sunset. 

Mother Harvard

Apparently, the subjects of the British crown want to know what is going on in America. In particular, they care about the current Kuilturkampf between the Trump administration and Harvard University.

To enlighten the British masses the Times of London-- not to be confused with the New York Times-- called upon eminent economic historian Niall Ferguson. He did not merely teach at Harvard. He was educated in Great Britain and taught at Cambridge.

Being as Ferguson is an historian, he traffics in specious historical analogies. Isn’t that why we all study history? I will spare you the details, but he compares what is going on between Trump and Harvard to a conflict that occurred at Oxford University between King James II and the fellows of Magdalen College  in the seventeenth century. 

What would we do without economic historians?

Ferguson wants to argue that notwithstanding the fact that Harvard is rife with anti-Semitism, the Trump administration has taken the wrong approach. It has been too heavy-handed against Harvard and risks being overthrown, so to speak.

As we see Columbia University getting religion and shutting down an anti-Semitic protest we might well conclude that the Trump approach, of cutting off funds, does get the attention of college administrators.

As for the actions the Trump administration took against dear old Harvard, Ferguson summarizes them:

Eight days later, Harvard received another letter from the government. This one demanded that the university take a long list of actions if it wished to continue receiving federal funds. For example, Harvard must: hire a third party to audit certain programmes, identify faculty members who contributed to antisemitism on campus, and sanction them “within the bounds of academic freedom and the First Amendment”; implement merit-based hiring and admissions reforms, to be audited by a third party; and shut down all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes and offices. Not long after, the government suspended $2.2 billion in multiyear federal grants and $60 million in contracts.

Clearly, the administration thought there was a problem. And it did not believe that Harvard was capable, using its own moral sense, of tamping down campus anti-Semitism.

Ferguson explains the problem at Harvard:

Late last month, the Harvard Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias published its report. It depicts a shocking culture of intolerance on campus: “Student activists [attempt] to drive Israeli students (and Jewish students who feel connected to Israel) out of student life.

This often takes the form of ‘shunning’.” And: “American Jewish students told us … they felt pressure to condemn Israel to prove they were ‘one of the good ones’ (meaning, an ‘anti-Zionist Jew’), and faced social consequences when they refused.” Moreover: “Jewish students told us stories of Harvard-run ‘privilege trainings’ where they were told that they were deemed to be privileged not only by dint of being identified as White but also because of their Jewishness”.

Whether or not you agree that the Trump administration overreacted, there is little question but that Harvard, in Ferguson’s words, has become “a hotbed of antisemitism:”

The problem here is that an institution once notable for its high proportions of Jewish faculty and students has, by its own admission, become a hotbed of antisemitism, even if some of this can be construed as anti-Israelism, a somewhat different thing. According to research by Fire, 67 per cent of Harvard students say it would be difficult to have an open and honest conversation about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Among faculty, the share is 84 per cent.

Harvard has trampled on civil rights laws and deserves to have its tax-exempt status revoked. Ferguson explains:

In short, there is a prima facie case that Harvard has in multiple ways violated civil rights law in ways that would justify the loss of its tax-exempt status. That is the standard the Supreme Court set in 1982, when it upheld a decision by the US taxman to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, in Greenhill, South Carolina, over its racially discriminatory policies, which included rules against interracial dating. (BJU regained its tax-exempt status in 2017, having abandoned the interracial dating rule in 2000.)

Of course, it’s not merely about anti-Semitism. Harvard has fostered a climate where free and open discussion and debate are impossible:

Here’s the Harvard Crimson again, from February 10.

“Only one third of Harvard’s last graduating class felt comfortable expressing their opinions about controversial topics during their time at the College, the University’s 2024 senior survey found, reporting a 13 per cent decrease from the Class of 2023.” Guess what? Only 19.2 per cent of the Class of 2028 are very concerned or concerned about free speech.

As noted, Ferguson believes that the Trump administration has overplayed its hand. He does not, it is fair to note, explain how he would have dealt with the situation:

Harvard merely exemplifies the rot that permeates the entire system. And yet my great fear is that, as happened in the case of James II and the fellows of Magdalen, too aggressive an external challenge may end up backfiring. For the reality is that the Trump administration chose the bazooka, not the scalpel, when it decided to make an example of Harvard. My nightmare is that, as a result, the worst culprits in the downfall of Harvard will now re-emerge from their recent, conspicuous silence to pose as the heroic upholders of academic freedom.

It’s very collegial to criticize without offering an alternative solution. For all you and I know, there was no real alternative to the crackdown on Harvard.