The fallout from the December 5th congressional testimony about antisemitism on their campuses by three Ivy League university presidents continues. Americans watched as our supposed best-and-brightest turned into equivocating robots on the most important moral issue of our time – Jew-hatred – the ancient envy-fueled hatred animating demonstrations on their campuses supporting a terrorist group and the genocide of the Jewish people.
No matter how cloaked, the obscenity of chanting a euphemism for genocide in the aftermath of the barbaric mass-murder of Jews in Israel on October 7th made clear the intent to continue inflicting terror on Jews everywhere. But the Smartest Women in Academia just couldn’t figure that out. Wink, wink.
Seeing this grotesque blight on humanity return less than 80 years since the exposure of the Holocaust, can be overwhelming enough. But in addition to such inhumanity parading itself on campuses like Harvard, Columbia, NYU, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, another significant event in American social and political history took place in front of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce — the fraud and death of feminism and the indictment of its foundational ideology – Identity Politics.
Many reading this column know about my history as a community organizer for the left, including as president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Los Angeles from 1990-1998, and as a member of its national board of directors.
As I began to watch the December 5th congressional hearing, my experience told me we were in trouble, but I did react to the fact that all three presidents of those prestigious institutions were women-- Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Penn’s Liz Magill, and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth.
It was something I would have loved to be proud of, but no. I was appalled at the Jew-hatred spilling over on their, and many other, campuses around the country, and my hope that we would hear their unconditional condemnation of what was happening and commitment to change the system was quickly dashed.
What played out in front of the nation was the reality that the feminist argument that women would be better at everything simply because of their sex and life experience, was a fraud. Women, due to experiencing bias and discrimination, had a natural compassion and commitment to "making things better," we were told by our mentors. We, as women, would naturally be better leaders, better managers, better organizers, and reverse the damage men had done in every institution.
HARVARD PRESIDENT CLAUDINE GAY RESIGNS AMID ANTISEMITISM, PLAGIARISM CONTROVERSIES
Life experience does matter, and women’s experience and style is an imperative in all human endeavors, but what was left out of the argument I was plied with was how character matters. It is a trait that highlights the individual’s importance. The morality and values that animate our lives and choices as Americans is the existential threat to the left’s nihilistic worldview, and they know it.
Then came Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth. Three women, during a time of great existential concern, decided to parrot well-rehearsed lawyerly talking points about "context" when asked if calls for genocide violated their codes of conduct on bullying and harassment.
If anyone would intrinsically understand bullying and harassment it would be women, the 25-year-old Tammy Bruce would have insisted. And certainly, a Black woman would be the first to grasp the consequences of people demonstrating and calling for the mass murder of a group of people because of an immutable characteristic. But no. They abdicated the power of their academic positions to do something about the danger of the bigoted mob and instead showed up as smug narrative gladiators for the system.
And then there was Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. Herself a Harvard graduate, it was her questioning of these three women that exposed their determination to not pass judgment on calls for genocide.
The New York Times, in a story about the New York representative, offered this: "They had parried her grilling with lawyerly answers that, on their own, might not have made international headlines. But then they fell into something of a prosecutorial trap laid by Stefanik, refusing to answer ‘yes’ when she asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their universities’ codes of conduct on bullying and harassment."
Asking university presidents if calls for genocide violated their codes of conduct is an easy question for the normal and decent. For those who are not, it’s a "trap."
This public abandonment of the most basic of moral understanding has now focused a much-needed spotlight on the bigotry embedded in the scourge of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology. We’re told it’s about diversity, but it’s not. DEI formalizes and institutionalizes the bigotry and discrimination of Identity Politics.
There have been valuable public discussions and articles explaining that DEI is a mechanism with which to normalize racism. The claim that it is "positive discrimination," as some sort of restorative justice for past discrimination of others, is dangerous hogwash. That claim unlocks the door to brainwash young people especially into believing that condemning and harming someone is appropriate simply because they have the ‘wrong’ sex, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. It is cultic manipulation, with the goal of creating an army of unthinking and ignorant Pol Pots.
But that is where we are. And how did this happen since there are millions of women who are good, compassionate, and visionary leaders? It happened because the left captured academia and media, and universities are the pipeline into business, journalism, law, and government. That’s how.
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Keep in mind, the DEI system requires its disciples to see the world through the leftist "oppressed vs oppressor" prism. It is the colonizer vs the colonized. DEI is not just a theory — it is a political ideology molded as an administrative and behavioral control center throughout the institutions it has infested.
There are plenty of women and people of color who would thrive as the president of an Ivy League university. Someone like Dr. Carol Swain, whom Claudine Gay allegedly plagiarized in her dissertation, is a good example. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as a scholar and diplomat, is another. Virgina Lt. Gov. Winsom Sears should also be on the list. But none of these women are leftists. None are conformists. All are free thinkers.
Women of color who do not pledge allegiance to the left are already deemed dangerous nonconformists, one of the first signs that they are especially unlikely to throw Jews into a volcano to please the Gods of DEI.
As of this writing, Magill and Gay have resigned their positions. Reportedly, Gay resigned only because of the plagiarism scandal. Some suggest if shrugging at Jew-hatred was her only ‘problem', she’d still be ensconced in the presidential suite. Both women, however, remain at their universities as tenured professors.
How is this possible? Because for the left, removing them completely would be the system cutting off its nose to spite its face.
So, the beat goes on, and goes much deeper than the comrades the system puts in the big chairs.
