{"id":16008,"date":"2023-11-02T20:29:56","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T18:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=16008"},"modified":"2023-11-02T20:29:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T18:29:56","slug":"is-the-new-mccarthyism-the-opposition-to-the-pro-palestinian-voices-heard-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=16008","title":{"rendered":"Is the New McCarthyism the opposition to the pro-Palestinian voices heard in the US?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2021 Republican Senator Tim Scott was among the leaders in promoting a resolution calling on colleges and universities to “facilitate and recommit to protecting the free and open exchange of ideas” and that “restrictive speech codes are inherently antithetical to freedom of the speech guaranteed by the 1st Amendment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum had sponsored legislation that would have prohibited the state’s universities from discriminating against student organizations or speakers based on their viewpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems, that those democratic policies they supported, however, do not apply in the case of Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of the Hamas terror attack on Israel, the two politicians are following a broader trend in the US that demands not only the silencing of any voice critical of Israel, but even the expulsion of pro-Palestinian foreign students from the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fuse of division in American auditoriums had been ignited days ago by the uproar caused by the publication of an open letter against Israel by a coalition of about 30 student groups. They blamed Israel exclusively for the bloody attacks by Hamas, causing strong reactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The letter even adopted the UN Secretary-General’s position that the Hamas attack “did not come out of nowhere” and then stated that Israel bears full responsibility for the explosion of violence. He even added that millions of Palestinians are forced to live in an open-air prison, with no way to escape. That is, it is a description of reality.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jews who criticize Israel are accused of\u2026 anti-Semitism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The University’s Jewish center, Harvard Hillel, claimed the statement was a sign of “further hatred and anti-Semitism”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this is not the case. Among the groups that signed the letter was Harvard Jews for Liberation. As was Harvard Law School’s “Justice for Palestine” and the Harvard South Asian Law Student Association. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis have also called on the government to revoke visas for foreign students, while others have suggested that universities critical of Israel should lose funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that the latter has been listened to even before billionaires and Wall Street itself have asked for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenneth Griffin has donated more than half a billion dollars to Harvard University, committing $300 million this year alone. He called on the head of Harvard’s board of trustees to vigorously defend the institution against Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t take them to work<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strongest pressures on universities operate behind the scenes and come from Wall Street financiers who form a powerful bloc of donors to schools such as New York’s Pennsylvania State University, Stanford and Cornell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the war in Vietnam, the university community had again taken a controversial stance, stifling voices of students who were against the war and the bombing of the Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many university authorities, such as Michigan’s, even allowed police violence against students who prevented the police from recruiting students on campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pershing Square Capital Management head and former Harvard graduate William Ackman has even called on company executives to refuse to hire students who are members of groups that have signed statements singling out Israeli violence as the cause of the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He even demanded that Harvard release a list of members of any student organizations that wrote the letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack. But such extreme positions have found opposition to former Harvard president Larry Summers, who believes that “now is not the time to demonize students,” while describing the extreme idea as “McCarthian.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2021 Republican Senator Tim Scott was among the leaders in promoting a resolution calling on colleges and universities to “facilitate and recommit to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[390,819],"tags":[4843,153,4841,4844,4842,215,70],"class_list":["post-16008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-usa","tag-harvard-university","tag-israel","tag-mccarthian","tag-palestinian-supporters","tag-students","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16011,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16008\/revisions\/16011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}