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Harvey ‘Bud’ Meyerhoff, chair of US Holocaust Memorial Museum at its founding, dies at 96
(JTA) — In 1986, eight years after Jimmy Carter established the President’s Commission on the Holocaust with Elie Weisel as its chairman, little progress had been made on the Washington, D.C. memorial it was tasked to create.
The Holocaust survivor, memoirist and newly crowned Nobel Peace Prize laureate recognized he lacked the management and fundraising experience to build the museum and submitted his resignation.
His successor, Harvey “Bud” Meyerhoff, knew about buildings and philanthropy. Prominent in the Baltimore real estate business and philanthropies started by his father Joseph, Meyerhoff went on to raise the $150 million in private funds that built the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on federal land on the southwest edge of the Mall in Washington.
“By its very existence at the heart of our great democracy, this museum will teach generations to come not only about the awful events of the past, but about the awful consequences of bigotry, oppression, hatred and intolerance,” Meyerhoff said at the dedication ceremonies on April 22, 1993, in the presence of Wiesel and President Bill Clinton. “And about the responsibilities that each of us has as citizens of a democratic society.”
Meyerhoff, a home builder and prominent supporter of the arts, culture and education in Baltimore and Israel, died Sunday at his Baltimore County home. He was 96.
“As chair for over 6 years — he succeeded Elie Wiesel — Bud guided the design, and oversaw the construction and fundraising that allowed the museum to open on time and on budget in 1993 — a task many considered impossible until he assumed the chair role,” his daughter, Lee Hendler, told the Baltimore Sun.
Although he may have achieved the impossible, Meyerhoff couldn’t withstand the internal political winds that swirled around the Holocaust museum and its fractious commission. Even as finishing touches were being put on the museum, its stakeholders debated its mission, with some charging that Meyerhoff’s vision was too universal for a memorial they felt should focus squarely on the genocide of the Jews. Just weeks before the museum’s dedication, and before Meyerhoff could lead the search for the open executive director position, the Reagan administration announced its decision to replace him.
Meyerhoff’s allies decried the abrupt timing of the decision, but Meyerhoff, who himself donated $6 million to the museum, sought to remain above the fray. “We will continue to work with the White House and the new leadership to ensure a smooth transition and successful start-up of museum operations,” he said in a statement.
Harvey Meyerhoff was born in Baltimore on April 6, 1927. His father immigrated to Baltimore from Russia in 1906 as a young boy. The elder Meyerhoff built a successful real estate business that he would later run with Harvey and Joseph’s son-in-law Jack Pearlstone. Joseph Meyerhoff was also a prominent philanthropist; the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concert hall bears his name.
Harvey earned a degree at the University of Wisconsin and served in the Navy near the end of World War II, returning home to join the family business, eventually becoming CEO of Monumental Properties, Inc. and president of Magna Properties, Inc.
In 1948, Harvey married Lyn Pancoe, and together they helped found the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the Harvey M. and Lyn P. Meyerhoff Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital. They were also supporters of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the National Aquarium, the National Zoo, Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Meyerhoff also had a minority stake in the Baltimore Orioles.
Prior to her death in 1988, Lyn, a prominent Republican donor, lobbied President Ronald Reagan to obtain the land for what would become the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Harvey directed the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds’ grantmaking until early 2000. Its giving in Israel focuses on civil and shared society, developing communities in the geographic periphery and capital projects that include daycare centers, playgrounds, sports facilities and libraries.
The Meyerhoff New Jewish Family Innovation Fund, run through Baltimore’s Jewish federation, promotes programs that engage people of color, adoptees, single parents and LGBTQ parents and children.
The fund is also a benefactor of 70 Faces Media, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s parent company.
Although detractors asked why the federal government would support the creation of and give pride of place to a privately funded museum dedicated to a historical tragedy perpetrated an ocean away, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has since become a fixture in Washington and an important institution for remembering the Holocaust and its lessons.
Meyerhoff laid out that vision in his dedication speech. “This building tells the story of events that human eyes should never have seen even once; but having been seen, must never be forgotten,” he said. “Through this museum, our eyes will always see; our hearts will always feel.”
Meyerhoff is survived by his second wife, Phyllis Cahn Meyerhoff; daughters Terry Rubenstein, Lee Hendler and Zoh Hieronimus; a son, Joe Meyerhoff II; 10 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.
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McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence
McGill University has canceled an on-campus event planned by Jewish students—and temporarily halted bookings for all extracurricular activities—following threats of violence along with a death threat, as outlined in a […]
The post McGill cancels talk with former Hamas insider turned Israel advocate, citing fears of violence appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel
US Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) at a press conference in Bergenfield, New Jersey, US on June 5, 2023. Photo: Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) on Tuesday introduced bipartisan legislation to cut off federal funding from universities that engage in boycotts of Israel.
The legislation, titled “The Protect Economic Freedom Act,” would render universities that participate in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel ineligible for federal funding under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, prohibiting them from receiving federal student aid. The bill would also mandate that colleges and universities submit evidence that they are not participating in commercial boycotts against the Jewish state.
“Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty and it undermines the relationship between the US and one of our strongest allies. If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences — starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act,” Foxx, chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement.
Gottheimer added that the legislation is necessary to thwart the surging tide of antisemitism on college campuses. Although the lawmaker noted that students are allowed to engage in free expression regarding the ongoing war in Gaza, he argued that blanket boycotts against Israel endanger the lives of Jewish students and community members.
“The goal of the antisemitic BDS movement is to annihilate the democratic State of Israel, America’s critical ally in the global fight against terror. While students and faculty are free to speak their minds and disagree on policy issues, we cannot allow antisemitism to run rampant and risk the safety and security of Jewish students, staff, faculty, and guests on college campuses,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “The new bipartisan Protect Economic Freedom Act will give the Department of Education a critical new tool to combat the antisemitic BDS movement on college campuses. Now more than ever, we must take the necessary steps to protect our Jewish community.”
The legislation instructs the US Department of Education to keep a record of universities that refuse to confirm their non-participation in anti-Israel boycotts. The list of universities in non-compliance with the legislation would be made publicly available.
In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre acrosssouthern Israel, universities across the country have found themselves embroiled in controversies regarding campus antisemitism. In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Israel, hordes of students and faculty orchestrated protests and demonstrations condemning the Jewish state. Student groups at elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia issued statements blaming Israel for the attacks and expressing support for Hamas.
Several high-profile universities have also shown a significant level of tolerance for anti-Jewish sentiment festering on their campuses. Northwestern University, for example, capitulated to demands of anti-Israel activists to remove Sabra Hummus from campus dining halls because of its connections to Israel. At Stanford University, Jewish students have reported being forced to condemn Israel before being allowed to enter campus parties. Students at the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University launched unsuccessful attempts to convince the university to divest endowment funds from companies tied to Israel.
The post US Lawmakers Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Strip Funding From Universities That Boycott Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Harvard Chaplains Omit Antisemitism From Statement on Antisemitic Incident
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University’s Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life is being criticized by a rising Jewish civil rights activist for omitting any mention of antisemitism from a statement addressing antisemitic behavior.
The sharp words followed the office’s response to a hateful demonstration on campus in which pro-Hamas students stood outside Harvard Hillel and called for it to banned from campus. Such a demand is not new, as it began earlier this semester at the direction of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization, which coordinates the lion’s share of anti-Zionist activity on college campuses.
As seen in footage of the demonstration, the students chanted “Zionists aren’t welcome here!” and held signs which accused the organization — the largest campus organization for Jewish students in the world — of embracing “war criminals” and genocide.
Addressing the behavior, Harvard Chaplains issued a statement, which is now being pointed to as a symbol of higher education’s indifference to the unique hatred of antisemitism, as well as its permutation as anti-Zionism.
“We have noticed a trend of expression in which entire groups of students are told they ‘are not welcome here’ because of their religious, cultural, ethnic, or political commitments and identities, or are targeted through acts of vandalism,” the office said, seemingly circumventing the matter at hand. “We find this trend disturbing and anathema to the dialogue and connection across lines of difference that must be a central value and practice of a pluralistic institution of higher learning.”
It continued, “Student groups who are singled out in this way experience such language and acts of vandalism as a painful attack that undermines the acceptance and flourishing of religious diversity here at Harvard. Let us all endeavor to care for one another in these divisive times.”
Recent Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, who addressed the Republican National Convention in August to discuss the ways which progressive bias in higher education fosters anti-Zionism and anti-Western ideologies, described the statement as a moral failure in a post on X/Twitter on Tuesday.
“Disappointing,” he said. “After Harvard Jews were told by masked students ‘Zionists aren’t welcome here’ outside of the Hillel, the Chaplain Office finally released a statement that did not include the words Jew, Zionism, Israel, or antisemitism. A total abdication of religious responsibility.”
Kestenbaum noted in a later statement that Harvard’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, has so far declined to speak on the issue at all. He charged that when Charleston “isn’t plagiarizing, she and DEI normalize antisemitism,” referring to evidence, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, that Charleston is a serial plagiarist who climbed the hierarchy of the higher education establishment by pilfering other people’s scholarship.
Harvard University president Alan Garber — installed after former president Claudine Gay resigned following revelations that she is also a serial plagiarist — has, experts have said, been inconsistent in managing the campus’ unrest.
During summer, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it suspended for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, a reversal of policy which defied the university’s previous statements regarding the matter. Unrepentant, the students, members of the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), celebrated the revocation of the punishments on social media and promised to disrupt the campus again.
Earlier this semester, however, Garber appeared to denounce a pro-Hamas student group which marked the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by praising the brutal invasion as an act of revolutionary justice that should be repeated until the Jewish state is destroyed, despite having earlier announced a new “institutional neutrality” policy which ostensibly prohibits the university from weighing in on contentious political issues. While Garber ultimately has said more than Gay when the same group praised the Oct. 7 massacre last academic year, his administration’s handling of campus antisemitism has been ambiguous, according to observers — and described even by students who benefited from its being so as “caving in.”
The university’s perceived failure to address antisemitism has had legal consequences.
Earlier this month, a lawsuit accusing it of ignoring antisemitism was cleared to proceed to discovery, a phase of the case which may unearth damaging revelations about how college officials discussed and crafted policy responses to anti-Jewish hatred before and after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The case, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, centers on several incidents involving Harvard Kennedy School professor Marshall Ganz during the 2022-2023 academic year.
Ganz allegedly refused to accept a group project submitted by Israeli students for his course, titled “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” because they described Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy.” He castigated the students over their premise, the Brandeis Center says, accusing them of “white supremacy” and denying them the chance to defend themselves. Later, Ganz allegedly forced the Israeli students to attend “a class exercise on Palestinian solidarity” and the taking of a class photograph in which their classmates and teaching fellows “wore ‘keffiyehs’ as a symbol of Palestinian support.”
During an investigation of the incidents, which Harvard delegated to a third party firm, Ganz admitted that he believed “that the students’ description of Israel as a Jewish democracy … was similar to ‘talking about a white supremacist state.’” The firm went on to determine that Ganz “denigrated” the Israeli students and fostered “a hostile learning environment,” conclusions which Harvard accepted but never acted on.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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