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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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