US Government Investigating George Washington University for Alleged Antisemitic Discrimination

Dion J. Pierre

George Washington University professor Lara Sheehi. Photo: Twitter.

The US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has opened an investigation into George Washington University to determine whether administrators allowed a professor to discriminate against Jewish students.

In January, StandWithUs, an educational nonprofit, filed a civil rights complaint alleging that the university would not intervene when Psychology Professor Lara Sheehi, who teaches a mandatory diversity course, invited an antisemitic speaker to address her class, launched a smear campaign against Jewish students, and later filed disciplinary charges against them in retaliation for their accusing her of antisemitism.

“We thank OCR for opening a full investigation into our complaint against GW and sending the clear message that whatever the bounds of academic freedom may be, they do not extend to professors mistreating and retaliating against students based on their Jewish and Israeli identities under the guise of political expression,” StandWithUs legal department director Yael Lerman said on Tuesday.

According to the complaint, Sheehi expressed contempt for Jews on the first day of class, when, in August, she asked every student to share information about their backgrounds and cultures. Replying to a student who revealed that she is Israeli, Sheehi said, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.” The students claim they made several attempts to persuade the university to correct Sheehi’s behavior or arrange an alternative option for fulfilling the requirements of her course. Each time, StandWithUs alleged, administrators said nothing could be done.

Later, the complaint continued, Sheehi spread rumors that the students were “combative” racists, and filed misconduct charges against them. In January, one student told The Algemeiner that she has never learned what university policies Sheehi accused her and her classmates of violating.

On March 27, George Washington University said there is no evidence to substantiate the students’ claims, citing an independent investigation it paid Crowell & Morning, a law firm based in Washington DC, to conduct. On Wednesday, a spokesperson told The Algemeiner that it “will fully participate in the department’s inquiry.”

That same day, the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) claimed victory and charged that StandWithUs “fabricated a complaint and intended to find traction because of anti-Arab racism and anti-Palestinian sentiment.”

The Algemeiner has asked ADC to comment on the government’s investigation. This story will be updated accordingly.

Roz Rothstein, StandWithUs CEO, endorsed the veracity of the students’ claims on Wednesday and expressed gratitude that they will be investigated by OCR.

“While professors may enjoy the right to spew wrongheaded and even hateful ideologies in some circumstances, they do not have the right to subject students to discriminatory conduct based on those views,” she said. “University administrators have an affirmative obligation to respond adequately when students report allegations of misconduct.”

George Washington University’s Jewish Law Student Association (JLSA) also commented on OCR’s investigation, expressing its “disappointment” with the university’s “dismissal” of evidence supporting the students’ retaliation claims. The group, citing a 2019 Executive Order on campus antisemitism, also said the university has shown “disregard for the federal standards for such complaints” and wrongly refused to share the report issued by Crowell & Morning.

JLSA noted that OCR, ruling against University of Vermont in a recent civil rights complaint alleging antisemitism, has said that a “university must not harass, coerce, intimidate, discriminate, or otherwise retaliate against an individual because that individual asserts a right to privilege under a law enforced by OCR.”

In the case, OCR also ruled that discriminating against Jew students because they are Zionists violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a decision legal experts described as “historic.”

Trailer Drops for Holocaust Miniseries About Dutch Secretary Who Hid Anne Frank’s Family From Nazis

Shiryn Ghermezian

Jan and Miep Gies, played by Joe Cole and Bel Powley, are visited by Mr. Van Pels, played by Andy Nyman. Photo: National Geographic for Disney/Dusan Martincek

National Geographic released on Tuesday a trailer for its upcoming limited series based on the true story of Miep Gies, the secretary of Otto Frank in the Netherlands who helped hide the Frank family and keep them safe from the Nazis during the Holocaust.

A Small Light stars BAFTA-nominated actress Bel Powley as Gies a young, married woman who was asked by her boss, Otto — played by Emmy-nominated actor Liev Schreiber — if he would help hide his family from the Nazis and she agreed without hesitation. For the next two years, Gies and her husband, played by Joe Cole, with the help of several others, watched over the Franks, as well as the van Pels and Pfeffer families hiding in the secret annex in Amsterdam during World War II.

Gies also held on to Anne’s diary, kept it hidden from the Nazis and returned it to Otto after the war. He later published his daughter’s diary and it became an international best-seller.

“Told with a modern sensibility, A Small Light shakes the cobwebs off history and makes Miep’s story feel relevant, forcing audiences to ask themselves what they would have done in Miep’s shoes; and in modern times, asking if they would have the courage to stand up to hatred,” National Geographic said in a released statement. “Some stood by; Miep stood up.”

The series title comes from something Gies said after the war about her heroic efforts: “I don’t like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others. Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”

“When we first heard the remarkable story of Miep Gies we were gripped and deeply moved,” said Carolyn Bernstein, EVP of scripted and documentary films at National Geographic. “We were also convinced that this limited series about an everyday superhero – one that most people around the world have never heard of – needed an unprecedented rollout. We are determined to bring A Small Light to the largest global audience possible and hope this ambitious rollout across multiple networks and streaming platforms allows audiences to fall in love with and be inspired by Miep just as we have.”

A Small Light, produced by ABC Signature and Keshet Studios, premieres May 1 on National Geographic and will begin streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu as well as on the Nat Geo TV and ABC apps. New episodes air every Monday. Nat Geo WILD and Lifetime will also air the first two episodes and on May 6 Freeform will encore the premiere episodes.

Watch the trailer for A Small Light below.

Pomniki oporu. Sztuka wobec powstania w getcie warszawskim (1943-1956) | program wydarzeń towarzyszących

Żydowski Instytut Historyczny

Przedstawiamy ramowy program wydarzeń towarzyszących wystawie czasowej „Pomniki oporu. Sztuka wobec powstania w getcie warszawskim (1943-1956)”, którą można oglądać w Żydowskim Instytucie Historycznym od 21 kwietnia do 1 października 2023 roku.
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‘Holocaust distortion is rising worldwide’

ETGAR LEFKOVITS

Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan sits down with JNS for an interview ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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Lithuanians massacre Jews at the Lietūkis garage during the Kaunas pogrom, June 27, 1941. Credit: Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum.

Holocaust distortion and trivialization and banalization are on the rise around the globe, even as outright denial is relegated to the fringes of society, the head of Yad Vashem says.

The remarks come at a time when multiple European countries seek to whitewash their roles in World War II by highlighting the heroes among their countrymen while obscuring or outright denying the actions of collaborators who participated in the murder of six million Jews.

“The good news is that outright Holocaust denial is today marginal,” Dani Dayan, the chairman of Yad Vashem, said in an interview with JNS ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday evening/Tuesday daytime. “No serious person will deny that the Holocaust happened except in lunatic fringes on social media [for example] in Iran or Malaysia.”

“On the other hand, we see a very worrying rise in Holocaust distortion which is no less disturbing,” he added.

Dayan said that multiple governments and groups in European countries are actively promoting an outright “historical fallacy” whereby their countries only helped Jews during the Holocaust while denying their people’s collaboration with Germany.

“They highlight the Righteous Among the Nations while obscuring or denying that there were many more collaborators than righteous,” he said, referring to the honor bestowed by Yad Vashem upon non-Jews who saved Jews at the risk of their own lives.

“This distortion is an affront to the victims,” Dayan said.

He listed multiple “Western as well as Eastern” European countries where this is happening: France, where last year a Jewish presidential candidate—Éric Zemmour—promoted the historical fallacy that the collaborationist Vichy regime was favorable to the Jews; Poland, which denies the widespread collaboration with the Nazis, something Dayan called “very problematic”; Bulgaria, which highlights the salvation of its Jews but neglects the crimes it committed against foreign Jews, as well as leaders of the Baltic states, who, like many others, highlight their Righteous countrymen while ignoring the greater reality.

“Most European countries do not excel in looking into their past and recognizing their sins,” Dayan said. “The easy way, the pleasant way, to remember the Shoah is to commemorate the Righteous. Nations should not only look into the good that some did [also] but into the horrendous acts that some of their people did.

“Our mission is to bring countries to fully recognize their actions in the Shoah—to honor the good and to repent the bad,” he said.

Trivialization and banalization

In the interview, Dayan also called out the trivialization and banalization of the Shoah that was rampant during the COVID-19 pandemic, with “outrageous comparisons” drawn between the green passes of those vaccinated and the yellow stars the Nazis forced the Jews to wear, as well as in the Russian war in Ukraine where, he said, both sides misuse the Shoah for their propaganda.

He cited both the Russian narrative that Moscow had to “de-Nazify Ukraine,” and the Ukrainian retort that Israel should help them as they supposedly assisted the Jews during the Shoah, when, in fact, there was widespread collaboration by Ukrainians in the slaughter of the Jews.

“We see that awareness of Shoah is growing but we have to be sure this awareness is not misused to distort and trivialize the Shoah in a propaganda war,” Dayan said.

Antisemitism in the U.S.

Dayan, previously Israel’s consul general in New York, said that he was surprised how antisemitism has taken hold in the U.S., a subject he thought would be low on his agenda during his time in a country that does not have the same history of antisemitism as Europe.

He said that a synergy had been created between four streams of antisemitism in the U.S.: neo-Nazi white supremacists; ideological Black antisemitism; hooligan antisemitism; and antisemitism thinly veiled as anti-Israel rhetoric.

Lessons of the past

Dayan said that while the situation today was emphatically not that of Germany in the 1930s, we have a responsibility to learn from the past.

“We have the experience they lacked,” he said. “We don’t have the privilege to say it can’t happen, because it happened. They were entitled to that terrible naivete; we are not.”

Dayan said that the message he shares with foreign dignitaries is that “Never again” is now.

“Antisemitism must be confronted and stopped immediately before it develops into monstrous dimensions and then it will be too late to stop,” he said. “When you say ‘Never Again,’ then if you mean it, never is now.”

Gal Gadot Hosts Gathering for Yom HaShoah With Youngest Holocaust Survivor Saved by Oskar Schindler

Shiryn Ghermezian

Gal Gadot. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Israeli actress Gal Gadot hosted at her California home a small gathering with a local Holocaust survivor who shared her life story and experiences during World War II with Gadot’s friends and family to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day on Tuesday.

“Hearing her testimony about the horrors she and her family went through and seeing the strong inspiring woman she became, left no dry eye in the room,” Gadot wrote in the caption of a photo slide she posted on Instagram from the event featuring Celina Biniaz. “At the end of her testimony Celina looked to me and said –  ‘life is just like what you said in your Wonder Woman movie – only love can save the world’ and this moment will stay with me forever,” added the actress, whose grandfather also survived the Holocaust.

Oskar Schindler was a German factory owner whose saved thousands of Jews from being murdered in the Holocaust by employing them at his factories during World War II. Biniaz was the youngest female that Schindler rescued, also known as those on Schindler’s List, according to the USC Shoah Foundation, which has also recorded her life testimony for its visual history archive.

Biniaz was born in Krakow, Poland, on May 28, 1931. She previously said she was 8 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland. Biniaz and her mother were part of the transport of women who were accidentally sent to the Plaszow concentration camp instead of Schindler’s factory. She was also transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp and when Schindler discovered the mistake, he personally made sure the two women went to the factory with him.

Biniaz and her parents survived the Holocaust because of Schindler’s efforts and the family later immigrated to the United States, where Biniaz became a teacher. She did not speak out about the ordeal she faced during the Holocaust for 45 years, opening up only after seeing Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List, she told the USC Shoah Foundation.

Biniaz’s testimony in front of Gadot’s friends and family was followed by a performance by Israeli musician Tomer Adaddi. The gathering was organized by Zikaron BaSalon, an Israeli organization that works around the world to help facilitate intimate events where Holocaust survivors can share their testimonies with small groups.

“There are fewer and fewer survivors each memorial day and by the year 2035 there will no longer be any survivors left to tell their stories,” Gadot concluded her Instagram post by saying. “It is our responsibility to keep sharing these stories, for ourselves and for the world – to hear, to know, to learn. To never forget.”