Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Hebrew U's new Prez has his work cut out for him
(see web page for links and photos)
Political Extremism and Nazi Salutes on the Hebrew University Campus
To Left (double meaning) - the new look for Hebrew University leftism?
The Hebrew University just elected for itself a new president, Dr.
Menachem Ben-Sasson, who used to be a Knesset backbencher from the Kadima
Party.
His nomination comes not only in the midst of a financial crisis for the
Hebrew University but also in the middle of a growing crisis of identity.
The seriousness of that crisis was made evident yesterday when a group of
leftist and Arab students on the campus, no doubt with the blessings of
radical anti-Israel professors, gave Nazi salutes to pro-Israel students
singing Hatikva and "Jerusalem of Gold." The story is reported in the
Jerusalem Post today, here.
Like the other liberal arts secular universities in Israel (Tel Aviv
University, Ben Gurion University, and my own University of Haifa), much
of higher education in Israel has been converted by these institutions
into leftist indoctrination and anti-Israel anti-Zionist "re-education."
There are entire departments in which no non-leftist or Zionist may teach.
Classrooms, especially in the social sciences, law, education, and
humanities, are often turned into little camps for North-Korean-style
extremist propagandizing. Incompetent pseudo-academics whose entire
academic records consist of anti-Israel propagandizing get hired, tenured,
and promoted, while dissident Zionist faculty sometimes have their careers
sabotaged. Professors preach ideology in class instead of engaging in
research and scholarship, and that ideology is invariably post-modernist
anti-Israel Marxist radicalism. (The non-radicals seldom use their
classrooms for political indoctrination. My own students do not have the
foggiest idea of what my own political opinions are unless they google me
on their own!)
The politicalization of the Israeli campus and the misbehavior of Hebrew
University radical faculty are documented in detail at the web site of the
Isracampus watchdog group here. Isracampus is a group initiative based in
part on the legendary Campus Watch watchdog that operated in the United
States, set up by the courageous Dr. Daniel Pipes.
Politicalization and radicalization of the faculty at the Hebrew
University is about as bad as it is anywhere in Israel, and worse even
than that on many American campuses. The whole collection of reports on
Hebrew University extremism assembled by Isracampus appears here.
The Hebrew University record ranges from faculty members justifying
anti-Israel terrorism, to other calling for an end to Israel's existence.
It includes faculty members being arrested for engaging in illegal and
violent behavior. It contains track records of numerous Hebrew University
faculty members smearing Israel and Zionism, denouncing Israel as an
apartheid peace-hating state, one that carries out horrific Nazi-like war
crimes for the heck of it.
Anti-Israel students at the Hebrew university are probably much more rare
than are anti-Israel faculty members, and there are probably less people
in all of Eastern Europe who believe in socialism than there are on the
faculty of the Hebrew University.
Nevertheless the growing anti-Israel faculty extremism there is having an
impact, and the parading of leftist and Arab students on the Hebrew
University's campus giving the Nazi salute in the middle of the meetings
of the school's Board of Governors is disturbing evidence of this.
To right - Hebrew U's new Prez. He has his work cut out for him!
