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JANUARY 18 • 2024 | 7
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education you are providing is
shattered.
Universities have been
failing right beneath our
noses, and former president
Gay played a role in fomenting
that failure for years. Her essay
exemplifies why she represents
exactly what has gone wrong
in higher education. She
complains that she “fell into
a well-laid trap” presented
by Rep. Stefanik during her
congressional testimony last
month.
What “well-laid trap” was
that, you ask? A fundamental
question that revealed an
unwillingness to protect
Jewish students on her
campus. “Does calling for
the genocide of Jews on your
campus violate your Code of
Conduct?”
In echoing her co-presidents
by legally parsing her answer,
hemming and hawing about
the extermination of Jews,
she revealed a total lack of
courage to stand up and speak
on behalf of the very lives of a
constituency of students and
faculty. A university president
representing such a “storied
institution” should have the
political savvy and leadership
skills to handle tough
questions from cantankerous
congressmen.
But portraying this as a
tough or tricky question
intended to sabotage her
career should raise eyebrows
even today.
This question was a lob.
Each of those presidents ought
to have slammed it across the
net. Even a cursory review of
their school policies indicates
that they would cover such a
situation if student conduct
officers possessed any will
to enforce the meaning and
intent of the policies. Heck,
it ought to violate university
values statements, at the very
least. The fundamental lack of
protection for Jews — visibly
demonstrated on nearly every
campus today — echoed
resoundingly in the collective
failure of their tepid, legalistic
answers.
There is truth to the
statement that what happened
to her represents a movement
much larger than herself. The
phenomenon sweeping higher
education is bigger than just
the institution of Harvard. It
is an awakening from slumber
for many Americans who
no longer recognize their
revered institutions of learning
from the ideological training
grounds for foreign terrorism
they have become.
It is a realization that right
beneath our noses, halls of
scholarship have degenerated
into cesspools of antisemitism,
closed-mindedness, anarchy,
groupthink, and disdain for
logic, fact and truth.
Former president Gay stood
behind and promoted every
one of those anti-values.
And, yes, there is a
generational and demographic
change occurring on
campuses. It is the resurgence
of and reversion to overt,
shameless Jew-hate, Jew-
quotas and Jew-persecution.
If she has not yet figured that
out after this horrendous fall,
she might want to summon
the courage to sit and listen.
To save America’s
universities, we will need
a new cadre of leadership.
One that does not relegate
scholarship, knowledge and
learning to second-tier goals
of higher education, falling
behind the destructive goals of
DEI initiatives. Leaders who
are not afraid of intellectual
debate and foster discussion of
difficult topics, not cancelation
of differing opinions. Leaders
who represent everyone on
campus, and not just favored
minorities to the detriment
of other minorities whose
persecution and isolation
are condoned and facilitated
institutionally.
Claudine Gay lacked the
courage to stand up and speak
when she needed to do so,
and she lacks the courage even
now to sit down and listen to
what went wrong. In short,
she lacks the qualities of a
successful leader, and that is
why her embarrassingly short
tenure will remain a stain on
Harvard’s history.
Ellen Ginsberg Simon is an attorney
and compliance professional. She has
an M.Phil in Modern Middle Eastern
Studies from Oxford University and is
also a graduate of Brown University
and Harvard Law School.
generation (typically aunts
and uncles) to the parents, and
perhaps to the older siblings
of the bar/bat mitzvah. Finally,
the Torah arrives into the
arms of the young initiate, the
newest link in an ancient chain
of heritage. At that moment,
the celebrant makes a silent
commitment to uphold the
ancestral values that have been
passed down for thousands of
years: uprightness and justice,
lifelong learning, loyalty to
family, and the fierce determi-
nation to protect and repair
the world we have been given.
This ritual reenactment
of mi dor l’dor is often the
moment when tears are shed.
One can feel the power of
ancient heritage in the room.
One can sense those who have
passed but are with us still in
spirit. And one can recognize
that however connected or
disconnected we are from the
Jewish path, somehow we each
play a part in this time-hon-
ored tradition that so many of
our ancestors wrestled to pre-
serve — and all too often, gave
their lives for.
The legacies that come
down to us are a rich and
complex mixture of noble
values and the painful trauma
residues of our fraught his-
tory. All of these reverberate
within our very cells. In our
generation, both science and
the still-unfathomed events
of these past months teach us
once again just how deep our
connection is to our ancestors,
and how their lives continue
to echo within us, from gen-
eration to generation, mi dor
l’dor.
Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone is an
author, Jungian psychotherapist
and leader in the Jewish Renewal
movement. This story was originally
published on myjewishlearning.com.
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