Strange Bedfellows
What's right is left and what's up is down. Claudine Gay's resignation served as a reminder that in 2024, it's hard to know who your friends or enemies are.
Two people kiss at beginning of their relationship Original illustrations from Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
When Claudine Gay resigned as president of Harvard University, I realized I had lost my way.
It’s a strange reaction to have, considering I have zero connection to Harvard. Before her remarks at the congressional testimony, I doubt I would have been able to tell you who she was. Like other liberals (and Jews), I carefully watched her milquetoast reply to Rep. Elise M. Stefanik’s gotcha line of questioning — and cringed. I wanted to get on board that the universities-are-a-hotbed-of-antisemitic-propaganda narrative. But part of me couldn’t jump on the bandwagon and now I know why.
Millions of words have been written about Gay since she resigned — in the end for plagiarism, not because of her response to antisemitism. But who are we kidding? In the years to come, all everyone will remember is the line, “it depends on the context.”
I hate to admit it, but the more that line is used as a punchline to an unfunny joke, the more I warm up to it. Don’t get me wrong: I’m certainly not calling for a genocide against myself and my own people but context, is well, context.
It keeps me up at night imagining her foes, the Christopher Rufos and the Bill Ackmans and of course, the Stefaniks, wink-winking to each other in the background that they hit their target, giving them the energy and moral authority to keep going.
They pushed out the first Black president of Harvard, a child of Haitian immigrants, a woman who as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, pushed anti-racism initiatives and increased diversity — who will now, in some people’s eyes go down in history as a promoter of antisemitism.
Etan Nechin captured this sentiment beautifully in wake of Gay’s resignation in a piece for Ha’aretz.
This tactic weaponized genuine concerns for Jewish safety in wake of the Israel-Hamas war and some campus groups' reaction to it, to attack elite liberal institutions like Harvard. It was part of concerted efforts to undermine teaching for example, critical race theory (CRT) and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to artificially enflame the culture war conservatives have been waging against liberal America for years.
Have no doubt: this maneuver is less about safeguarding Jewish safety and combating hate and more about catering to a right-wing base.
He continues:
those who pushed for Gay's dismissal do not care about the safety of Jewish students or they are indifferent to Jewish safety, black and brown advancement, or the principles of free speech and social justice.
On the contrary, they—many of them Ivy League graduates from a past era —seek to turn back time so that a black woman as such a university president remains an unfulfilled aspiration, students protesting for Palestine are silenced, and Jews are coerced into aligning with their manufactured culture wars or risk being ostracized from their community.
Like Nechin said, these defenders of Jews, the Ackmans and Stefaniks, and others — they are not my friends. The question I’m struggling with now is: who are?
The war between Israel and Gaza has created some strange bedfellows, especially for liberal Jews like me. Early on, I wrote about feeling alienated from my progressive roots. Suddenly, language could injure so long as it was directed at Jews. Suddenly victims of sexual assault were questioned, but only when it happened to Jews.
Read: “Folks, Who are You Pretending to Be.”
That was over 100 days ago, and I won’t say that I’m not still angry and scared but I am looking at what comes next. There is a lot at risk: 132 hostages are still remaining, the already astronomical death toll in Gaza continues to climb, more journalists are being killed than ever before, Israel has been accused of genocide in the Hague and frankly the viability of the future of the State of Israel is in question as well as the possibility of there ever being a Palestinian state.
But that’s not all. What happens next, to progressives, to academics, to intellectuals and to Jews when this war is over might push us down an even worse path.
I’m reminded briefly of The Women’s March, the organization, which after Trump’s inauguration, inspired rallies across the globe, with many donning the signature “pussy hats.” Not long after its inception, the organization was rocked by claims of antisemitism. What a distraction, I thought to myself at the time. Why can’t we put this aside when we have so many bigger issues to tackle. Don’t let them divide us.
I’ll say it out loud this time. We can’t let them divide us. The foes of Claudine Gay are not my friends, even if they claim to be concerned about antisemitism. I don’t want to wake up in bed next to them but rather with people asking the right questions — even if they are not uttered perfectly, even if they make me slightly uncomfortable — so long as the intention is to improve all of our lives.
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There is merit in the concern over the abuse of first amendment rights on college campuses—antisemitic speech leads to antisemitic behavior and legitimate fear—but, yes, the cultural warriors are also putting Jews in that difficult place that you describe: be part of us or risk losing the shield of our protection.
The far right, under the guise of standing up to antisemitism , is striving t unite a base where they offer a mafia style protection in exchange for joining a cultural warrior attack that is anathema to most Jews. In so doing they aim to extend a base that has white supremacists on one side, racism deniers in the middle ( Haley’s inability to state slavery as the cause of the civil war ) and Jews to the left, joining because they want protection from first amendment abuses.
I dont want to minimize the issues that led to the criticism and resignations of college presidents, but I want to agree that the motivation behind the attacks on elite education and diversity is insidious and provides the far right with an ideal smokescreen for their repressive mechanisms.
You are so right about divide and conquer.