In my recent series on faculty anti-Semitism, I pointed out the failure of many observers to treat the phenomenon as a serious threat. John Wilson, for example, opined on the AAUP's Academe Blog that the classic anti-Semitic caricatures, found on the Facebook page of Rutgers professor Michael Chikindas, were only "upsetting . . . personal opinions" that do nothing more than make some people "uncomfortable." San Francisco State's Rabab Abdulhadi brushed off Hatem Bazian's tweets of anti-Semitic memes as merely "a mistake" by the Berkeley lecturer, while blaming the subsequent complaints on a silencing campaign by the "Zionist establishment."
As I explained in a recent oped in the Chicago Tribune, campuses life can survive a handful of anti-Semites, whether their invective originates on the right or on the left. But we cannot withstand an attitude of casual dismissiveness among mainstream faculty such as Smith and Abdulhadi, who refuse to recognize anti-Semitism as a dangerous ideology rather than the personal quirk of, in Smith's words, "an idiot."
If any evidence were needed, consider the recent murder of Blaze Bernstein, a Los Angeles college student, home on vacation from the University of Pennsylvania, who was found stabbed more than 20 times and buried in a shallow grave. The suspected murderer, a high school classmate of Bernstein's, is known to have frequented white supremacist websites and to have posted an image of himself reenacting a neo-Nazi inspired murder. What are the chances that he had previously encountered the sorts of anti-Jewish caricatures and memes that were circulated by Chikindas and Bazian?
I am not arguing here for suspending or disciplining Chikindas or Bazian, which, in fact, I think would be wrong. But I am calling on other faculty, whatever their ideological commitments, to recognize that anti-Semitism is every bit as treacherous and corrosive as other forms of racism. It is peddled by bigots, not idiots; it is deadly, not eccentric.
Couldn't agree more. Faculty indifference to these issues is not simply misplaced opinions concerning "idiocy" IMHO.
Rather, the tacit acceptance of certain forms of bigotry and prejudice is rife in academia, especially legal academia.
How often do you hear casual references to "middle aged straight cis-gender males" … "jewish" is often tacked into the list. It is more than tacit acceptance of this casual slurring: these attitudes infect hiring and promotion decisions, and make life very uncomfortable for those who are so often and casually demeaned (sometimes, in the most nasty manner).
One notable area of sort of obvious bias in hiring is legal writing instruction. As debated some years ago in the FL, one would think that this reflects a "nurse doctor" "secretary lawyer" "teacher principal" sort of mentality, and would thus be a source of outrage, yet, we hear nothing about this either.
Short answer: legal academics accept their own prejudices as valid, even when any common sense inquiry would reveal quite pernicious conduct based thereon.
FWIW, some reports are suggesting it was an LQBTQ bias crime–Bernstein thought Woodward was interested in him and Wood ward said Bernstein kissed him.
We tell our children not to act and espouse the statements of Donald John Trump. We tell our children that he is not a normal president. Or well. He is sick. Like telling an abandoned child that a parent cares about you, but is not "well." We tell children to look to Barack Obama or watch Senators Lindsay Graham, Mitch McConnell or Mike Pence. So, when they get to college, their professors act like Donald Trump. What then?