2023-12-10 18:19:00
After the shock resignation on Saturday of the president of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) for accusations of anti-Semitism on American campuses, pressure increased on Sunday in the United States and in Israel against the bosses of Harvard and MIT who had also been criticized Tuesday before Congress.
In a context of rising anti-Semitism in the United States since the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the reaction of “friends and leaders of the American Jewish community” of six million of souls, the most important after the Hebrew State.
“One down, two left,” Elise Stefanik, Republican representative of the State of New York in the House of Congress, insisted on Saturday evening on UPenn, and to her peers Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth, presidents of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), respectively.
“Invasive rot”
“This is only the beginning of the fight against the invasive rot of anti-Semitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ institutions of higher education in America,” thundered Ms. Stefanik, summoning the heads of Harvard and MIT to “ make the right choice” by leaving because “the world is watching”.
The three university presidents are pushed out by dozens of Congressional parliamentarians after their hearing on December 5 – deemed “absolutely shameful” by the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania – before a committee of the House of Representatives on the subject of the increase anti-Semitic acts at university.
In a very tense atmosphere, Ms. Magill, Gay and Kornbluth responded for five hours on Tuesday to Ms. Stefanik who equated the calls for an “intifada” from pro-Palestinian students to an exhortation to “genocide against the Jews in Israel and in the world”.
When the conservative elected official asked whether “calling for the genocide of the Jews violated the rules on harassment at Harvard, yes or no?”, Ms. Gay replied: “It may, depending on the context”, before adding: ” If it’s directed at a person.”
$100 million loan
Friday, the president of Harvard, who had defended with her colleagues the sacrosanct principle of freedom of expression in the United States, said she was “sorry” that her “words (have) amplified the distress and pain” and Ms. Magill released a video message of apology after a donor threatened to withdraw $100 million in loans to UPenn.
In office since the summer of 2022, she finally resigned on Saturday evening under pressure from the president of the university’s board of trustees, Scott Bok, who also left with “immediate effect”.
After the responses of the three presidents deemed “unacceptable”, the Education Committee of the House of Representatives of Congress opened an investigation Thursday into “endemic anti-Semitism” on American campuses.
And in Israel, which Washington supports diplomatically and militarily, the head of government Benjamin Netanyahu denounced on Sunday “a major wave of anti-Semitism in the United States, coming from the left and the right, with an outbreak on campuses and in universities.”
“What matters is that the friends and leaders of the Jewish community finally stand up against this anti-Semitism. There is only one way to fight it: with honor and pride, without bowing our heads, but counterattack”, insisted the Prime Minister during the weekly meeting of his cabinet.
Since the bloody attacks by Hamas against Israel on October 7, followed by deadly retaliations by the Jewish state, the conflict has shaken American universities on the East Coast – united in the very renowned “Ivy League” – such as Harvard and MIT near from Boston, UPenn in Philadelphia and Columbia in New York.
For Dani Dayan, president of the Holocaust memorial in Israel Yad Vashem, “the epicenter of anti-Semitism in the United States is now on university campuses, particularly in the Ivy League” and compared it to a “cancerous” growth.
10/12/2023 17:18:09 – New York (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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