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MIT President Also Had an Antisemitism Problem at Duke
Clocktower Quad at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Photo: Warren LeMay/Wikimedia Commons.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth is no stranger to making light of antisemitism. Kornbluth is now notorious for her evasive response to questions at the December 5 Congressional hearing about Jew hatred at MIT, Harvard, and UPenn. What many people don’t realize, however, is that Kornbluth had a legacy of indifference towards antisemitism during her time at Duke University, where she was Provost before her move to MIT in January of this year.
One of the most egregious examples of her behavior involves Kornbluth’s handling of the Duke University Press (DUP). In late 2017, DUP published Jasbir Puar’s infamous and poorly written Right to Maim, in which Puar uses inscrutable and bizarre language to claim that Israelis — i.e. Jews — intentionally maim “Palestinians” in order to control them and use them for economic gain.
When Jewish faculty at Duke wrote a letter of concern to Duke’s President Vincent Prince, he brushed them off, saying the book would be judged “in the court of public opinion.” He passed the buck to Sally Kornbluth, since the DUP reported to her as Provost. He promised that she would evaluate “the issues” and “how the editorial board is selected and how diversity of thought and expertise is ensured going forward.” Kornbluth did nothing of the kind.
Kornbluth took no action on Puar’s book, and DUP continued to publish material dehumanizing Jews and erasing Jewish historic ties to the land of Israel. Examples include The Colonizing Self Or, Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine, which accuses Israelis of living in “Palestinian” homes, and Palestine Is Throwing a Party and the Whole World Is Invited, which claims that investment policies maintain the “occupation” and subordination of “Palestine” in relation to Israel.
Jewish faculty learned in early 2022 that additional problematic publications were planned, such as Invited to Witness Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine and a Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Palestine, both of which ignore Jewish presence and relationship to Israel. The faculty members requested a meeting with the DUP director, to include Kornbluth. She did not show.
Many believed over the years that since Kornbluth is Jewish, she would support our community — but they were wrong.
In 2019, Duke and the University of North Carolina hosted a conference on Gaza that was rife with antisemitism. A civil rights complaint was filed, requiring Duke to address its antisemitism problem.
Kornbluth was silent.
Also in 2019, Duke’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter held its Israeli Apartheid Week. Speakers included local students who visited leaders of the terrorist group. the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Speakers called Israel a “white supremacist nation” and invited students to sign up for more Eyewitness Palestine trips.
Kornbluth was silent.
In November 2021, approval of a new Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter was vetoed by the Duke Student Government (DSG), when an SSI member dared to push back on the false “settler colonial” narrative about Israel. SSI was eventually reinstated, but only after the DSG was called out for their discriminatory behavior. Price and Kornbluth ignored the plight of Jewish students and Duke’s role in enabling antisemitism, saying that DSG’s actions are “independent of, and not determined by or sanctioned by the University.”
In 2022, Mohammed El-Kurd — who claims that “Zionists have an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood” and feed on organs of “Palestinians” — spoke to a large audience at Duke. He mocked Jewish students, crumpling up their fliers on stage as the audience laughed. Many individuals and organizations reached out to Duke president Price. Price did nothing — and Kornbluth was silent.
So, what did Kornbluth say publicly about antisemitism on campus? She signed a letter denying its existence.
It comes as no surprise, then, that Kornbluth denies antisemitism at MIT, just as she did at Duke. Her intransigence is beyond redemption. While there are calls for her to be fired for her tolerance of Jew hatred, President Price is just as guilty and deserves the same.
The author is a former assistant professor of General Internal Medicine, Duke University, and Co-Founder, North Carolina Coalition for Israel.
The post MIT President Also Had an Antisemitism Problem at Duke first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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