We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: This Monday, paid subscribers got this month’s ET Ask Home, a monthly questionnaire.
All subscribers to this newsletter also now get The Political Cycle, a weekly podcast I co-host on politics in the US, UK, India, and the wider world, ad-free and directly to their inboxes from me. My co-hosts and I are trying to broaden its reach and sending it out to all of you is one way to do that. I hope you’ll give it a listen.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For the Forward, I wrote about what Orbán’s attack on CEU, and the futility of the institution’s attempts to comply with the law designed to push it out, teach us about Trump and Columbia and the farce that any of this is about antisemitism.
For Haaretz, I wrote about politically slippery language like "terrorist sympathizer" or "aligned to Hamas" and how both recent events in the US and elsewhere and US history show us how such language puts different groups—including Jews—under the wheel.
For the Washington Post, I wrote about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s Antisemitism in America: A Warning and why I fear his warning fails to meet this moment.
I thought this essay from the London Review of Books by Jan-Werner Müller on the variety of self-justifications people find for capitulating to Trump, to which I am late, was very good.
MY VIEWS ON…
…on choice!
Years ago I came across a quote on a Chipotle bag. The quote was from journalist and author Sheri Fink and it read, “Often in life, the most important question we can ask ourselves is: do we really have the problem we think we have?”
I thought about it while reading this Politico article this morning about universities and the Trump administration and the “stunning display of how some of the country’s oldest, wealthiest and enduring institutions have swiftly folded to Trump, who is acting on longstanding conservative criticisms of universities as elitist and progressive.”
It includes a quote from “Holden Thorp, the former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill” who says “It’s going to be tense for a while, because … the [university] presidents are not going to go into full-on resistance mode. They have too much history and financial resources and people to protect to do that.”
A similar framing is in a Wall Street Journal piece from today on Columbia and its impending decision. “If she cedes to White House demands over campus antisemitism allegations, she risks revolt from faculty fearing a loss of academic freedom. Refuse, and lose $400 million in federal grants and contracts, threaten the work of scores of Columbia scientists, and invite further sanctions that could imperil the entire university.”
Just so we are clear: she doesn’t risk revolt from faculty fearing a loss of academic freedom. She will have lost academic freedom. Maybe that sounds less tangible than $400 million, so let’s make it even clearer: The university will have made it clear that its academic freedom can be bought for $400 million.
The thing that struck me about both of these quotes is that the problem is presented as being between lofty ideals and the hard reality of defending the university. But without the lofty ideals, what’s the point of the university? If a university can’t defend academic freedom, what institution will? If Holden Thorp, the former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, doesn’t understand that the way to protect the history of the university is to protect the present and future of the university, and that, if you can’t, the history isn’t worth protecting, will anyone?
These quotes identify the wrong problem. The problem is not between ideals and the university. The university is the ideals, or it’s just some buildings and names on sweatshirts. The problem is that university administrators and trustees are looking at the Trump administration and asking what choice they have. But we all have choices, always. And when we can’t see them, that becomes our problem.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
Israel’s back to striking Gaza (at least 45 were reportedly killed overnight Thursday) and freed hostages are accusing the Israeli government of abandoning those still left behind.
From RNS: “More than 2,400 Jewish scholars from universities across the United States have signed a letter denouncing Trump administration efforts to harass, expel, arrest or deport students or staff from colleges and universities across the country on the pretext of combating antisemitism.”
From JTA: “The leader of a far-right French political party founded by a Holocaust denier and a former Nazi officer is headed to Israel. So are politicians from far-right parties in Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands — all tapped to speak at this month’s International Conference on Combating Antisemitism. It is the most prominent manifestation, so far, of an Israeli government announcement two weeks ago that the country will end its longstanding boycott of far-right parties in Sweden, France and Spain.”
In Slate, Joel Swanson writes about teaching in Jewish Studies at this moment and how Trump’s Department of Education is hurting, not helping.
Also from JTA: “Joe Rogan, who hosts one of the most popular podcasts in the country, invited a Holocaust revisionist to his studio just over a week after interviewing someone who spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories.”
From the Forward: “Leo Terrell, the civil rights attorney in charge of President Donald Trump’s antisemitism task force, shared a post on X Friday from a notorious white supremacist leader. ‘Trump has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card,’ said the post, which included a video of the president saying that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is ‘not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.’ The author of the post was Patrick Casey, who led Identity Evropa, a now-defunct organization founded in 2016 to promote the ‘Nazification of America.’”
-ET