Paul Miller, writing for Algemeiner.com, reveals that Brandeis University has professors on its staff who are overtly anti-American and anti-Semitic. Examining writings gleaned from a faculty listserv and reported by Daniel Mael, a student at the university, Miller notes that not only were there offensive posts on the listserv, but the university itself has stifled free speech.
The listserv, called “Concerned,” was created in 2002 “out of concern about possible war with Iraq.” The political stance it took was intransigent; co-creator Gordon Fellman wrote in a 2009 email, “It is rude to post a recipe for pork roast on a vegetarian listserv or an orthodox Jewish one, or right wing harangues on the concerned list.”
In a Breitbart News exclusive, Mael wrote, “It contains 92 subscribers, including professors from outside of the university. Participants express their fear and disdain on issues ranging from United States foreign and domestic policy, the ‘American system’ and ‘the Israelists,’ to ‘President Obomber,’ and ‘Hillary Obliterate Iran! Clinton.’ “
East Asian Studies Professor Donald Hindley is the most obvious case of rampant anti-Semitism; in 2007 he compared Israel to Nazi Germany in a 2007 listserv email with the subject line, “Plant a Tree, Bury a Palestinian,” commenting in the email, “Zionist olive trees grow wondrously on Palestinian corpses. In that way, we combine great trees with our own holocaustic ethnic cleansing.”
That was only the beginning for Hindley; a December 24, 2009, email called then-president of Brandeis Jehuda Reinharz the “Brandeis führer,” a November 21, 2010, email was titled “The Reinharz Reich in Perspective,” and an email on September 12, 2012, to the “Concerned” list regarding National Public Radio’s coverage of the Benghazi attack, which had happened the day before, vented:
Anybody hear this evening’s NPR report on this “incident”? Made no mention of the Israeli Jew film creator and his American Jewish financiers. None. But a lot about the Christian cleric. Typical for NPR News, serving what the Israeli government wants us Americans to know and believe – or not know and not believe. Profoundly shameful and anti-American.
Only one problem: Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the film’s creator, is an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian.
As recently as April 24 of this year, long after Reinharz had left his post and been replaced by Fred Lawrence, Hindley sent an email to Sabine von Mering, Brandeis Associate Professor of German and Women’s and Gender Studies, that dealt with the possibility of Brandeis divesting from businesses that profit from fossil fuels. He wrote, “With Reinharz and his Israelization of (and self-enrichment from) the campus … and now Lawrence (NOT of Arabia) [Pres. Fred Lawrence] and his al-Quds, AIPAC, and the anti-Islam Somali … what do you expect?”
Hindley is not the only professor manifesting hateful behavior; when Brandeis withdrew an invitation for an honorary degree from women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali in April, the move drew widespread condemnation. Hirsi Ali had been named one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time magazine, but 87 professors signed a petition to prevent her from speaking. English professor Mary Baine Campbell fulminated:
Houston, we have a problem. Ayaan Hirsi Ali claims to have had a difficult early life, and it may be true. However, she’s an ignorant, ultra-right-wing extremist, abusively, shockingly vocal in her hatred for Muslim culture and Muslims, a purveyor of the dangerous and imaginary concept, born of European distaste for the influx of immigrants from its former colonies, “Islamofascism” – which has died on the vine even of the new European right wing. To call her a “women’s rights activist” is like calling Squeaky Fromm an environmentalist.
Brandeis spokeswoman Ellen de Graffenreid defended the emails from the listserv: “The e-mails are from the archives of a faculty listserv. A number of statements are taken out of context and come from a broad range of periods and times.” She added that the university supports academic freedom.
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