Uncategorized
Connecticut College students are in revolt after president’s planned talk at Florida club with antisemitic and racist past
(JTA) – When students at Connecticut College learned that their president had been planning to attend a fundraiser at a historically racist and antisemitic golf club, they began to organize.
But their school’s building for race and ethnicity programming, the Unity House, didn’t have enough space to hold them all. So a pivotal meeting that kicked off a weeks-long campaign against the university took place at a space with a larger capacity: its Hillel house.
“Having a Jewish space on campus that felt like a safe space to gather as a community is something that really struck me as important,” Ilan Listgarten, a Jewish sophomore at the college, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Three weeks later, Connecticut College students have moved to an even bigger location: They have occupied a central administrative building on the New London campus for five days and counting, and are receiving support from faculty and staff.
The students want the president to resign, and they are calling for increased funding and support for various ethnic studies and student group programs. Their demands include enhancements to the Jewish studies program (the school currently offers a minor) and bias training to address antisemitism.
Tensions have remained so high that Hillel leaders canceled a planned Shabbat dinner with the embattled president, Katherine Bergeron, an annual event that this year had been scheduled for Friday.
As Jewish students and faculty on other campuses have complained that they feel excluded from progressive activism, the crisis at Connecticut College has gone in a different direction. Jewish students are playing a leadership role in the protests, working closely with a coalition of activists from other backgrounds who specifically invited Hillel to join in its efforts. That’s notable because, at other schools across the country, recruiting support from coalitions of minority groups has been a hallmark of pro-Palestinian activists — who often boycott (or are themselves barred from) Hillel due to its pro-Israel stance.
“I’ve felt even more proud to be Jewish on campus right now,” sophomore Davi Schulman, a student journalist and member of Connecticut College Hillel’s leadership team, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And I’m just proud to be a Connecticut College student. We’re really coming together like we never have before.”
Connecticut College students are protesting against their school’s president, Katherine Bergeron, who had been scheduled to speak at a venue with an antisemitic and racist history. (Courtesy of Sam Maidenberg/The College Voice)
Key to Hillel’s participation, observers said, was the fact that the kindling for the student uprising involved antisemitism. Bergeron had been planning to attend a fundraiser for the college to be held at the Everglades Club, an exclusive golf club in Palm Beach, Florida, that has a history of denying entry and membership to Jews and Black people (reportedly including Black Jewish entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and Jewish cosmetics mogul Estée Lauder).
Today the club is secretive about its current membership policies, though recent testimony from officials has claimed that the club no longer discriminates against Jews. Its antisemitic past was enough to turn off former President Donald Trump from selling his Mar-a-Lago club to them in the 1990s.
The larger campus community became aware of the fundraiser only after the school’s dean of institutional equity and inclusion, or DIEI, resigned from his position Feb. 7 after only a year on the job, citing the president’s unwillingness to take his advice to cancel the fundraiser. Bergeron announced the next day that the event had been canceled and apologized “to all who saw our plans as contrary to Conn’s values or to the inclusive institution we aspire to be.”
The dean had leaked his resignation letter to a group of student activists, sparking the initial efforts to organize what became Student Voices for Equity — and that meeting in the 6,700-square-foot Zachs Hillel House. Jewish students suggested the venue, opened in 2014 to serve the school’s roughly 200 Jewish students, when it became apparent that the crowd of hundreds wouldn’t fit in Unity House.
The controversy over the fundraiser was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to Rabbi Susan Schein, the director of Connecticut College Hillel (and an employee of the university’s diversity and equity office). She and students said there had been long-standing dissatisfaction among many on campus with Bergeron’s leadership; several students said they wanted to see more funding and support for ethnic studies and diversity-focused programs.
When the student activists approached Hillel’s student leadership about having a Jewish representative join their efforts, the students quickly agreed, electing to have Listgarten play the role; today he is helping to support the around 30 students who are occupying the campus building where the president’s office is located. The Hillel also issued a statement standing in solidarity with the movement’s goals.
Connecticut College sits along the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. It enrolls about 2,000 students. (Connecticut College)
A Connecticut College spokesperson told JTA that Bergeron and the school’s administration “take the issues that have been raised seriously,” and that it would conduct an independent review into “the workplace-related concerns.” The college also pledged “significant additional resources” into its diversity-focused efforts. It did not address how the planned fundraiser at the country club had come together. Bergeron has sent six letters to the campus community about the controversy since the diversity dean’s initial resignation.
The ease with which the campus’s Jewish community has fit into this movement is a testament to deliberate programming efforts at the Hillel to reach out to forge relationships between Jews and non-Jews on campus, Listgarten and Schein said. Hillel hosts events like “Unity Shabbat” designed to bring together other marginalized groups, and its center — which includes a game room — was envisioned by funder Henry Zachs as a common space for Jews and non-Jews alike, Schein said.
It wasn’t always this way at Connecticut College. In 2015, the school attracted national attention when a student decried as racist a months-old Facebook post by a Jewish professor about the previous year’s conflict in the Gaza Strip. The professor had ambiguously used an analogy of “rabid pit bulls,” without specifying whether he was talking about Hamas or all Palestinians.
In the resulting furor, hundreds of students and alums signed an online petition demanding the college condemn “the racism and dehumanization” of his post. Pro-Israel activists came to the professor’s defense and accused the campus community of being hostile to Jewish and pro-Israel views.
Today, Listgarten said, Israel hasn’t come up in this current period of student activism, and dialogue between Jews and non-Jews remains civil. He confirmed Bergeron has also hosted annual Shabbat dinners with Hillel students. But this year, after the fundraiser controversy broke into view, Hillel leadership elected not to dine with her for their scheduled Shabbat dinner, which would have taken place Friday.
“The Hillel Board has very clear values of tzedek,” Listgarten said, using the Hebrew word for “justice.” “As soon as this event occurred and it was clear that our values were drastically opposed to that of the president, we canceled.”
Despite their warm reception, Schulman said she’s “conflicted” by the fact that the other campus activists “consistently mentioned the Jewish community on campus and included us in the group of marginalized students.” To her and the other Hillel leadership, the Jewish community has “privilege” that students from some backgrounds don’t, and they’ve made that a central part of their messaging. They cite the existence of the Zachs Hillel House itself, and the fact that it is in better condition than other university spaces devoted to race and ethnicity programming, as one example.
“We don’t want to appear to be pushing any kind of agenda or whatever,” Schulman said. “We’re kind of taking a step back and supporting everyone who is expressing their feelings.”
This dynamic has been crucial to Hillel’s success at ingratiating itself with larger campus culture, Schein said. She invoked Jewish teachings by way of explanation.
“The country club issue that came up involved antisemitism, and I think that caught the attention of the Jewish students. But here they recognized it is not just about themselves, and that they have a responsibility to support others,” Schein said.
Citing the famous quote by Rabbi Hillel, the campus group’s namesake, she added, “They stepped into it. They could’ve been outside, but they said, ‘Now is the moment to support our DIEI colleagues.’ And that’s what the campus is doing. They said, ‘If not now, when?’”
—
The post Connecticut College students are in revolt after president’s planned talk at Florida club with antisemitic and racist past appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Like Trump, Hitler also wanted to build monuments to himself — so did Franco, Gaddafi and Alexander the Great
As the leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler laid out plans for structures that would serve as monuments to himself. His grandest scheme was predicated on his absolute certainty Germany would conquer the world: rebuilding Berlin into a Wagnerian monument to Teutonic superiority and renaming the city World Capital Germania.
Just as Hitler sought to inscribe himself onto Berlin’s skyline, Donald Trump has been pursuing his own form of self-mythologizing — having his name added to the Kennedy Center façade; proposing an arch larger than the Arc de Triomphe; floating other grandiose ideas meant to ensure the world doesn’t forget him.
All around the globe, wherever you find megalomaniacs you will find monuments to their egos. Among them are Francisco Franco’s “Valley Of The Fallen,” a colossal bust of Ferdinand E. Marcos on a hillside in the Philippines, Joseph Stalin’s Stalingrad, streets in Syria named after the Assads, a Libyan square named after Muammar Gaddafi, North Korean streets and institutional buildings named after the Kim dynasty, and a Turin stadium that bore Mussolini’s name.
It is clear that Donald Trump envisions himself as a member of this rogue’s gallery.
Alexander the Great is among the best-known world figures to immortalize himself in this way, by founding a city in Egypt and naming it Alexandria. He was followed six centuries later by Constantine the Great, who founded a new Roman capital on the Bosporus Strait and named it Constantinople. A 100-foot column topped with a gold-encrusted statue of the emperor dominated the city’s forum.
European wars in the 18th and 19th centuries sprouted multitudes of monuments to victorious leaders — glorious and otherwise. After Kaiser Wilhelm I’s armies defeated Denmark, Austria and France, the Germans raised gargantuan memorials that blended modern triumph with mythic antiquity. Many are still standing: towering figures of Germania, medieval emperors and legendary warriors.
“Herman the German,” an 82-foot-tall tribal chieftain in a winged helmet, and mounted atop an 88-foot temple-like pedestal, looms over the north German countryside with his sword raised as if daring anyone to challenge him. The figure is actually Hermann — the Germanized name of Arminius, as the Romans called the Cheruscan leader who annihilated three legions in the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D.
At the Deutsches Eck in Koblenz, an enormous bronze statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I astride his horse rises above the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle, announcing Germany’s arrival as a great power. Forty miles upstream, on the east bank of the Rhine, stands the Niederwalddenkmal, a 125-foot colossus celebrating Germany’s victory over France and the founding of the Reich in 1871.
On the other side of Germany, perched on a mountain in Thuringia is the Kyffhäuserdenkmal — 266 feet of terraces, arches and towers built to celebrate Kaiser Wilhelm I and the new German Empire he presided over. At its base sits a massive stone figure of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the 12th-century ruler who, according to legend, never died but sleeps inside the mountain, waiting to return when Germany needs him.
All of these monuments, bespeaking the glory of Germans and their ancestors, were repurposed by the Nazis to project a sense of historical inevitability — as if Hitler’s regime were the next chapter in a lineage stretching from Arminius to Barbarossa to Wilhelm I.
Long before Hitler became chancellor, Berlin already possessed grandiose monuments to Teutonic greatness: the Siegessäule (Victory Column) and the Brandenburg Gate, crowned by a bronze quadriga driven by Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory. Hitler and his architect, Albert Speer, envisioned even grander transformations. The centerpiece of World Capital Germania was to be a structure called the Volkshalle (People’s Hall), a domed monstrosity that would be able to hold 180,000 people. Also on the drawing board was a Triumphal Arch, so large that the Arc de Triomphe would have fit within its opening.
After France’s defeat in 1940, Hitler signed a decree asserting: “In the shortest possible time Berlin must be redeveloped and acquire the form that is its due through the greatness of our victory as the capital of a powerful new empire.”
Hitler added: “I expect that it will be completed by the year 1950.”
Obviously, Hitler didn’t last that long. Neither did work on “World Capital Germania.” And all across defeated Germany, the thousands of street signs bearing Hitler’s name came down and were replaced.
Donald Trump, perhaps glimpsing his own mortality, seems to be in a hurry to leave an indelible and grandiose imprint on the nation’s capital and beyond. Much of the country watched in disbelief as heavy equipment tore into the White House East Wing to clear ground for a super-sized new ballroom designed in the gilded idiom of America’s 47th president. His name newly affixed beside JFK’s on the façade of the Kennedy Center only amplified the sense that Trump is racing to secure the permanence he has long craved.
And he is far from finished.
His most extravagant project is one reminiscent of Hitler’s ideas for World Capital Germania — that “triumphal arch” that the White House has cast as a defining pillar of Trump’s legacy.
“The arch is going to be one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle declared.
But even as Trump pursues these monumental ambitions, he keeps running into the limits of democratic resistance. In one of the more brazen episodes, he told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he would release long-delayed federal funds for a critical rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York if Dulles International Airport and Penn Station were renamed for him. Schumer refused, and the gambit collapsed.
The only way Trump managed to get his name onto the Kennedy Center was by replacing multiple board members with loyalists and then having himself appointed board chair. His newly installed board approved adding his name to the building’s façade — a move that cannot legally alter the institution’s official name, which only Congress can change. This particular gambit backfired, prompting a long list of prominent performers to cancel appearances in protest.
Trump’s plans for a grand arch could also face some obstacles, because of laws designed to protect the capital’s commemorative landscape.
Who knows how much of Trump’s ambitions to remake Washington, D.C. in his own image will come to fruition. But even if a Trumpian analog of Germania never arises, with the way he has disrupted this country and the world, he’s already molded himself into something like a menacing monument in human form.
The post Like Trump, Hitler also wanted to build monuments to himself — so did Franco, Gaddafi and Alexander the Great appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Jeremy Carl is latest Trump nominee facing Senate pushback over history of antisemitic remarks
(JTA) — A key GOP senator is opposing the appointment of a Trump nominee over his past remarks about Jews, the Holocaust and Israel, potentially dooming Jeremy Carl’s bid for a top State Department post.
Carl, who is seeking the role of Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, drew scrutiny during his Thursday confirmation hearing for past writings and statements about Jews. Those included a 2024 interview on a podcast called “The Christian Ghetto” in which the first-term Trump official said, “Jews have often loved to play the victim rather than accept that they are participants in history.” On the same podcast, he opined that there was “an extent to which the Holocaust kind of dominates so much of modern Jewish thinking, even today.”
Following his appearance, Utah Sen. John Curtis, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, announced he would not be supporting Carl’s nomination.
“After reviewing his record and participating in today’s hearing, I do not believe that Jeremy Carl is the right person to represent our nation’s best interests in international forums, and I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated,” Curtis said in a statement.
Carl, however, is continuing to push for the post on X. Since the hearing, he has used the platform to defend his performance and repost allies, including some who responded directly to Senate accusations of his antisemitism. Vice President JD Vance this week also shared a post of Carl’s, though not one directly related to his confirmation bid.
Carl also denied accusations from Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy that he is a white nationalist, though he continued to insist that “white culture” is under threat.
A Claremont Institute fellow, Carl was born Jewish but has since converted to Christianity. He served in the first Trump administration’s Interior Department and has argued that “white Americans are increasingly second-class citizens in a country their ancestors founded.”
The White House also continued to defend its pick of Carl after the hearing in a statement to the New York Times late Friday.
And at least one of Carl’s defenders is Jewish: Michael Rubin, a conservative historian and longtime government advisor on Middle East affairs, called the campaign against his former Yale classmate a “lynch mob” in the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
Carl, Rubin wrote, “is a man whose record of action and allies belie any serious consideration that he is antisemitic, anti-Zionist, or racist.”
Carl’s grilling came days after Republicans booted another Trump appointee from the administration’s religious freedom commission over her remarks about Israel and Zionism during an antisemitism hearing.
If Carl’s bid fails, he would not be the first Trump nominee with a history of questionable comments about Jews to fail to clear the Senate — though other Trump officials remain in their positions despite histories of antisemitic posts.
On the “Christian Ghetto” podcast interview, Carl also gave advice to Christians “looking to convert Jews” like him. He did, however, reject certain conspiracy theories about cabals of Jewish power. “I’m very critical of, overall, the political stance and the sociology of the Jewish community, particularly in this century. It’s been very destructive overall. But I don’t think that that’s a result of a conspiracy,” he said. His other podcast appearances include Tucker Carlson in 2024.
His new role — if confirmed — would put him in a critical position of influence over U.S. policy related to the United Nations, at a moment when both Israel and the U.S. are highly critical of that governing body over its perceived anti-Israel bias.
That concerned Curtis, who said that Carl’s past comments that the U.S. “spends too much time and energy on Israel, often to the detriment of our own national interest” would damage his credibility at the UN.
“Share with me specifically, what in the US interest has been harmed by sustained American support of Israel?” Curtis asked. Carl did not directly answer the question, instead pivoting to criticizing the UN for antisemitism.
“In the UN context, I wish the UN would stop being antisemitic all the time, and so therefore we could stop — there’s a million other problems, like the Rohingya,” he said. Upon Curtis’s repeated questioning, Carl added, “I think diplomatic support of Israel in the UN context is absolutely critical.”
Curtis also noted that Carl seemed to agree with a podcast host’s remarks that Jews were “claiming special victim status because of the Holocaust” and that “the state of Israel is not a victim but instead a perpetrator,” among other remarks.
“This was your response: ‘Right, right, yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s true,’” Curtis said, of Carl’s appearance on the “Christian Ghetto” podcast.
“I do a lot of podcasts,” Carl responded, adding that he was “sure” his quotes were “accurate.”
Democratic Senators, including some Jews, were more forceful in condemning Carl’s remarks about Jews.
Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada, quoting a recent American Jewish Committee study that one in three Jewish Americans have experienced antisemitism, produced placards of some of Carl’s past pronouncements on Jews, including that “the Jews love to see themselves as oppressed.”
“To my colleagues that may consider voting for Mr. Carl’s nomination, understand what the vote signals,” she said. “It tells Jewish Americans they simply don’t matter.”
The post Jeremy Carl is latest Trump nominee facing Senate pushback over history of antisemitic remarks appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Spike Lee says his pro-Palestinian NBA All-Star Game fit wasn’t meant as a dig against Deni Avdija
(JTA) — The director Spike Lee says he was not targeting the first Israeli NBA All-Star when he wore a pro-Palestinian outfit to the All-Star Game on Sunday.
Lee’s outfit which featured a keffiyeh-patterned sweater and flag-themed bag strap. Some of his critics charged that he had chosen the outfit especially because Deni Avdija, the Israeli star of the Portland Trail Blazers, was taking the court.
Lee put that idea to rest in a post on Instagram late Tuesday, saying that he had not known Avdija was Israeli because the Trail Blazers are a West Coast team. (Lee is a New York Knicks superfan.)
“There has been some conjecture about what I wore to the games on Saturday and Sunday. The clothes I wore are symbols of my concern for the Palestinian children and civilians, and my utmost belief in human dignity for all humankind,” Lee wrote. “What I wore was not intended as a gesture of hostility to Jewish people or to support violence against anyone, nor was it intended as a comment on the significance of Deni being an an All-Star.”
About his lack of familiarity with Avdija, whose World Team fell short in the round-robin contest featuring 28 NBA stars, Lee added, “He can BALL. NOW I DO KNOW.”
The post Spike Lee says his pro-Palestinian NBA All-Star Game fit wasn’t meant as a dig against Deni Avdija appeared first on The Forward.