Three academics with "piled higher and deeper" elite degrees cannot call out antisemitism?

 This column was updated to reflect the news.

The Ivy League Flunks Out!

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Maureen Dowd

I was still kvelling about earning my Ivy League degree when the glow of that parchment dimmed. On Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania put on a pathetic display on Capitol Hill when they were asked if calling for genocide against Jews counted as harassment.

"It depends", (❓😡😲) they all said. 

Penn’s Elizabeth Magill offered a chilling bit of legalese. “It is a context-dependent decision,” she told Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from upstate New York.

Not since Bill Clinton was asked about having sex with Monica Lewinsky and replied, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” has there been such parsing.

It’s hard to be on Stefanik’s side, given that she epitomizes the grotesque transformation of the Republican Party to an insane Trump cult, but she was right to pin down the prevaricating presidents.

Citing a Washington Free Beacon report, Stefanik noted in The Wall Street Journal that Harvard has cautioned undergraduates that “cisheterosexism*” and “fatphobia” helped perpetuate violence and that “using the wrong pronouns” qualified as abuse.

When Stefanik asked Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, whether calling for the genocide of Jews constituted bullying, Gay said it could, “depending on the context.”

I felt the same disgust with the Catholic Church sex scandal, seeing church leaders who were charged with teaching us right from wrong not knowing right from wrong. 

University presidents should also know right from wrong.  

Ya' Think❓  Hello❗

As left-wing virulence toward Jews collides with right-wing virulence, these academics not only didn’t show off their brains, they didn’t show their hearts. (Magill resigned on Saturday.)

“I think the inability of these individuals to articulate a simple, straightforward answer to what should have been the easiest question in the world was mind-boggling,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, told me. “It’s like a hurricane of hate in the last few months. You ask yourself, how is this happening? Now we know.” He added, “The truth is that these presidents are not committed to free speech. They’re committed to favored speech. They selectively enforce the codes of conduct when it works for them or their friends in the faculty lounge.”

Leon Wieseltier, the editor of Liberties, a humanistic journal, has an essay on antisemitism in the next issue, echoing Greenblatt with a complaint about the “selective empathy” that made kaffiyehs “cool.”

“I think this is still America,” Wieseltier said, “but what is so wounding and intolerable is how we went from spending four years intensely and rightly focusing on one class of victims in society, and now are prepared to make light of the troubles that another class of victims are experiencing.

“The culture on campuses is a culture of oppressors and oppressed. Israel is now Goliath and no longer David — though God knows it has mortal enemies capable of the most astonishing savagery. The Jews were long ago stricken from the rolls of the oppressed because they are seen as white and privileged. We are a culture which loves victims and worships victimization and gives great moral authority to victims, but we don’t treat all victims equally.”

The U.N. women’s rights agency and social justice groups grossly delayed condemning barbaric sexual attacks on women by Hamas during its October 7th massacre.

Wieseltier also put blame on the authoritarian Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “One of the reasons for this war is the Israelis’ decades-long neglect and humiliation of the Palestinians,” he said. “They thought it would never come back and bite them. Netanyahu plays right into the left’s false analysis of Israel as a colonial settler state.”

As James Carville told Bill Maher: “How the hell am I still looking at Netanyahu’s stupid, crooked, ignorant, negligent face? This guy’s still in power after the greatest intelligence failure at least since 9/11?”

Roger Cohen wrote in The Times that Netanyahu let Hamas grow stronger while taking a “‘kick the can down the road’ approach” on a two-state solution. As the Palestinian issue vanished from the global agenda, Palestinian fury grew.

That is no excuse for what Hamas did on October 7; but October 7 is also no excuse for Israel’s relentless bombing in Gaza.

I think this is still America. But I don’t understand why I have to keep making the case on matters that should be self-evident.

• For example, why should I have to make the case that a man who tried to overthrow the government should not be president again?
• Why should I have to make the case that we can’t abandon Ukraine to the evil Vladimir Putin?
• Why should I have to make the case that a young woman — whose life and future ability to bear children are at risk — should not be getting persecuted about an abortion by a shady Texas attorney general?
• Why should I have to make the case that antisemitism is abhorrent?

Maureen Dowd is an Opinion columnist for The Times.

*Cisheterosexism - The system of oppression that values and centers cisgender and heterosexual people by upholding heterosexuality and the gender binary as normal and neutral, while marginalizing, oppressing, and making invisible LGBTQIA2S+ people.

Conspiracy theories evaluated in academic research

Essay published in The Conversation, the public community common license news site, by Donavan Schaefer, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania:

Buying into conspiracy theories can be exciting – that’s what makes them dangerous.

Conspiracy theories have been around for centuries, from witch trials and anti-semitic campaigns to beliefs that Freemasons were trying to topple European monarchies. In the mid-20th century, historian Richard Hofstadter described a “paranoid style” that he observed in right-wing U.S. politics and culture: a blend of “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.”

But the “golden age” of conspiracy theories, it seems, is now. On June 24, 2022, the unknown leader of the QAnon conspiracy theory posted online for the first time in over a year. QAnon’s enthusiasts tend to be ardent supporters of Donald Trump, who made conspiracy theories a signature feature of his political brand, from Pizzagate and QAnon to “Stop the Steal” and the racist “birther” movement. Key themes in conspiracy theories – like a sinister network of “pedophiles” and “groomers,” shadowy “bankers” and “globalists” – have moved into the mainstream of right-wing talking points.

Much of the commentary on conspiracy theories presumes that followers simply have bad information, or not enough, and that they can be helped along with a better diet of facts.

But anyone who talks to conspiracy theorists knows that they’re never short on details, or at least “alternative facts.” They have plenty of information, but they insist that it be interpreted in a particular way – the way that feels most exciting.

My research focuses on how emotion drives human experience, including strong beliefs. 

In my latest book, I argue that confronting conspiracy theories requires understanding the feelings that make them so appealing – and the way those feelings shape what seems reasonable to devotees. If we want to understand why people believe what they believe, we need to look not just at the content of their thoughts, but how that information feels to them. Just as the “X-Files” predicted, conspiracy theories’ acolytes “want to believe.”

Thinking and feeling: Over 100 years ago, the American psychologist William James noted: “The transition from a state of perplexity to one of resolve is full of lively pleasure and relief.” 

In other words, confusion doesn’t feel good, but certainty certainly does.

He was deeply interested in an issue that is urgent today: how information feels, and why thinking about the world in a particular way might be exciting or exhilarating – so much so that it becomes difficult to see the world in any other way.

James called this the “sentiment of rationality”: the feelings that go along with thinking. People often talk about thinking and feeling as though they’re separate, but James realized that they’re inextricably related.

For instance, he believed that the best science was driven forward by the excitement of discovery – which he said was “caviar” for scientists – but also anxiety about getting things wrong.

The allure of the 2%:  So how does conspiracy theory feel? 

First of all, it lets you feel like you’re smarter than everyone. Political scientist Michael Barkun points out that conspiracy theory devotees love what he calls “stigmatized knowledge,” sources that are obscure or even looked down upon.

In fact, the more obscure the source is, the more true believers want to trust it. This is the stock in trade of popular podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” – “scientists” who present themselves as the lone voice in the wilderness and are somehow seen as more credible because they’ve been repudiated by their colleagues. Ninety-eight percent of scientists may agree on something, but the conspiracy mindset imagines the other 2% are really on to something. This allows conspiracists to see themselves as “critical thinkers” who have separated themselves from the pack, rather than outliers who have fallen for a snake oil pitch.

One of the most exciting parts of a conspiracy theory is that it makes everything make sense. We all know the pleasure of solving a puzzle: the “click” of satisfaction when you complete a Wordle, crossword or sudoku. But of course, the whole point of games is that they simplify things. Detective shows are the same: All the clues are right there on the screen.

Powerful appeal:  But what if the whole world were like that? 

In essence, that’s the illusion of conspiracy theory. All the answers are there, and everything fits with everything else. The big players are sinister and devious – but not as smart as you.

QAnon works like a massive live-action video game in which a showrunner teases viewers with tantalizing clues. Followers make every detail into something profoundly significant.

When Donald Trump announced his COVID-19 diagnosis, for instance, he tweeted, “We will get through this TOGETHER.” QAnon followers saw this as a signal that their long-sought endgame – Hillary Clinton arrested and convicted of unspeakable crimes – was finally in play. They thought the capitalized word “TOGETHER” was code for “TO GET HER,” and that Trump was saying that his diagnosis was a feint in order to beat the “deep state.” For devotees, it was a perfectly crafted puzzle with a neatly thrilling solution.

It’s important to remember that conspiracy theory very often goes hand in hand with racism – anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. People who craft conspiracies – or are willing to exploit them – know how emotionally powerful these racist beliefs are.

It’s also key to avoid saying that conspiracy theories are “simply” irrational or emotional. What James realized is that all thinking is related to feeling – whether we’re learning about the world in useful ways or whether we’re being led astray by our own biases. As cultural theorist Lauren Berlant wrote in 2016, “All the messages are emotional,” no matter which political party they come from.

Conspiracy theories encourage their followers to see themselves as the only ones with their eyes open, and everyone else as “sheeple.” But paradoxically, this fantasy leads to self-delusion – and helping followers recognize that can be a first step. Unraveling their beliefs requires the patient work of persuading devotees that the world is just a more boring, more random, less interesting place than one might have hoped.

Part of why conspiracy theories have such a strong hold is that they have flashes of truth: There really are elites who hold themselves above the law; there really is exploitation, violence and inequality. But the best way to unmask abuses of power isn’t to take shortcuts – a critical point in “Conspiracy Theory Handbook,” a guide to combating them that was written by experts on climate change denial.

To make progress, we have to patiently prove what’s happening – to research, learn and find the most plausible interpretation of the evidence, not the one that’s most fun.