Last week, Yale University decided to kill the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, (YIISA) a unique research project on anti-Semitism in the US, and the only one of its kind in America. The project will shut down next month.
YIISA brought to the campus almost every notable scholar studying contemporary Jew-hatred. The collection of presenters gathered at the August 2010 conference had credentials that were impressive even by Yale’s standards, and the project was also well-funded.
So why was it shut down? According to a statement by the university's top PR officer, Director of Strategic Communications Charles Hogen, there was an official review by an unidentified and anonymous faculty committee that determined that YIISA had failed to "serve the research and teaching interests of some significant group of Yale faculty and . . . be sustained by the creative energy of a critical mass of Yale faculty."
Hogen wrote this even though Yale's Deputy Provost Frances Rosenbluth lauded the YIISA and said it was "guided by an outstanding group of scholars from all over the university representing many different disciplines," including professors of history, sociology, comparative languages, psychiatry, economics and political science. So apparently there was and is a significant group of Yale's faculty interested studying and examining this.It's also worth noting that Yale when asked was unable to name any other research center it had closed. Nor can YIISA appeal the university's decision.
The reality? The program actually touched the third rail of academia,particularly at places like Yale. At its inaugural conference last year, it had speakers and workshops who addressed in depth one of the chief sources of anti-Semitism...Muslim and Palestinian Jew hatred.
Yale President Richard Levin apparently got an earful from a number of sources about this. Yale is the recipient of some major baksheesh from the Muslim world - a $20 million endowment gift from Saudi Prince Alwaleed, a major $360 million gift back in 2002 from then Saudi Crown Prince and now Saudi King Abdullah , and large gifts of undisclosed amounts from the UAE's notorious ruling Maktoum family.
This, if you're interested, is why the Yale University Press went through the ludicrous exercise of publishing a scholarly book on the Mohammed Cartoons..without the images themselves included!
President Levin also heard from the American PLO "Ambassador" Maen Rashid Areikat, who wrote "It's shocking that a respected institution like Yale would give a platform to these right-wing extremists and their odious views...I urge you to publicly dissociate yourself and Yale University from the anti-Arab extremism and hate-mongering that were on display during this conference."
And from a prominent Muslim student leader, one Yaman Salahi, who accused the president and the university of 'Islamophobia' and called the conference racist.
Of course, none of these people had any problem with Yale hosting Islamist professor Tariq Ramadan or with a lecturer at Yale's new Jackson Center for Global Affairs taking her class to visit Iranian Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinjad in New York.
What Yale is essentially doing is reflecting its own dhimmitude and heeding its greed for Muslim petro-dollars while ridding itself of an embarrassing reflection of what comes with it.
They should at least have the common decency to take the Hebrew lettering of their university crest. Lux et veritas ( "Light and Truth") indeed.
2 comments:
light and truth?
i thought it was bend over?
Iys really a shame that this study could not be continued. America's biggest problem right now is its poor image in the world. Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism are close relatives of one another.
By studying anti-Semitism we might be able to gain a better insight on anti-Americanism and this in turn might help us to formulate a coherent strategy to combat both anti-americanims and anti-Semitism.
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