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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Accused of Ignoring Antisemitism
Joe Gindi of Rutgers University, Yasmeen Ohebsion of Tulane University, and Kevin Feigelis speaking to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce on February 29, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Massachusetts Institute of Technology ignored numerous complaints of antisemitic discrimination, according to harrowing testimony provided during a “round table” meeting on campus antisemitism at the US Capitol on Thursday.
Held by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, the meeting marked another phase in Congress’ investigation of antisemitism at US colleges and universities, an inquiry that aims to determine whether administrators have willfully ignored bigotry when Jews are its victims.
In December, the committee questioned three presidents of elite universities — Claudine Gay of Harvard University, Elizabeth Magill of University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of Massachusetts Institute of Technology — about their efforts to address the problem. While Gay and Magill were ultimately forced to resign from their positions, Kornbluth evaded scrutiny. The testimony of one Kornbluth’s students, Talia Khan, suggested that higher education watchdogs should have focused on on her as well.
“In the past five months, I’ve become traumatized,” Talia Khan, a student, told the committee. “MIT has become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus. Members of the anti-Israel club on our campus has stated that violence against Jew who supports Israel, including women and children, is acceptable. When this was reported to president Kornbluth and senior MIT administration, the issue was never dealt with. Then, administrator pleaded ignorance when we reminded them that no action had been taken, saying that they either forgot about it or missed the email.”
Khan went on to recount MIT’s efforts to suppress expressions of solidarity with Israel after Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, which included ordering Jewish students to remove Israeli flags from public display while allowing Palestinian flags to fly across campus campus. It is a “scandal” Khan explained, alienating both Jewish students, staff, and faculty, many of whom resigned from an allegedly farcical committee on antisemitism. Staff were ignored, Khan said, after expressing fear that their lives were at risk, following an incident in which a mob of anti-Zionist amassed in front of the MIT Israel Internship office and attempted to infiltrate it, banging on its doors while “screaming” that Jews are committing genocide.
“No action was taken to discipline this behavior,” Khan explained. “We have DEI administrators, an inter-faith chaplain, and faculty who have openly supported Hamas as martyrs, harassed individual Jewish students online, and publicly supported antisemitic blood libel conspiracy theories. The MIT administration seems only to listen to those faculty and members of the MIT corporation who help them continue to gaslight Jewish students and faculty, telling us we’re being over dramatic and should just, quote, ‘Go back to Israel if we don’t feel safe studying here.’”
In the past, Kornbluth has suspended anti-Zionist groups for breaking campus rules, but she has always maintained that she does not disagree with the content of their speech.
The committee also heard statements from Jewish students of Tulane University, University of California-Berkeley, Stanford University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, The Cooper Union, and Harvard University.
“I hope that our universities will wake up and realize that a lot of what they have been doing in our interactions is lip service and placation,” Tulane University Yasmeen Ohebsion told The Algemeiner early Friday morning, during an interview about the meeting. “Words are shallow if action doesn’t follow them.”
Noting that campus administrators “have failed Jewish students by repeatedly brushing hate against Jews under the rug,” Hannah Schlacter, a second-year student at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, called on Congress to address campus antisemitism through legislation.
“I’d like to see Congress create legislation that allows accountability to occur,” Schlacter said in a statement to The Algemeiner. “One possibility is that if the Department of Education opens an investigation into a university regarding discrimination, the Congress freezes the university’s nonprofit tax status and federal funding until the issue is resolved.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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