{"id":117460,"date":"2024-12-04T17:05:03","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T15:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=117460"},"modified":"2024-12-03T16:24:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T14:24:38","slug":"04-05-103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=117460","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s future depends on Trump\u2019s promise to punish woke universities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>America\u2019s future depends on Trump\u2019s promise to punish woke universities<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that he will make good on his vow to defund institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Mullett Arena on Arizona State University campus in Tempe, Ariz. on Oct. 24, 2024. Photo by Ash Ponders for \u201cThe Washington Post\u201d via Getty Images.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Occidental College seemingly waved the white flag last week in its efforts to defend itself against charges of tolerating antisemitism on its Los Angeles campus. The school agreed to a\u00a0\u201csweeping settlement\u201d<\/a>\u00a0with the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law that acknowledged the ongoing hardships, harassment and discrimination faced by Jewish students since the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Occidental\u2019s apathy to all this, which was little different from what has been happening at dozens if not hundreds of other American institutions of higher learning, violated its obligations to prohibit such discrimination under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.<\/span><\/p>\n

But for many observers, the context for the agreement was not so much a belated interest by one school to address the wrongs suffered by its Jewish students. Rather, it was the fact that it came a few weeks after the election victory of Donald Trump. As one headline in a\u00a0news article<\/a>\u00a0about the settlement put it, \u201cCollege settles antisemitism claims before Trump can make good on accreditation threats.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump repeatedly made clear during the 2024 election campaign that the educational establishment would be as much a target for his second administration as the denizens of the Washington \u201cswamp\u201d such as the liberal-dominated federal bureaucracy that did so much to sabotage and obstruct his first four years in the White House.<\/span><\/p>\n

More will hinge, however, on whether he makes good on this promise than the fate of school administrators or even the safety of Jewish students.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s war on woke<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

The president-elect vowed to punish colleges and universities that tolerated not just the sort of antisemitism that went on at Occidental and so many other schools. He\u2019s also determined to rid American higher education of the plague of \u201cwoke\u201d ideology. That\u2019s a term that refers to the way left-wing ideologues have conquered academia and imposed toxic ideas like critical race theory and intersectionality that divide humanity into two permanently warring groups of \u201cwhite\u201d oppressors and \u201cpeople of color\u201d who are their victims. The left\u2019s long march through U.S. institutions\u2014and that includes the arts, corporate America and government\u2014has involved the indoctrination of a generation of students in the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that trashes equal opportunity (the opposite of \u201cequity\u201d) and includes only certain approved minorities while excluding everyone else, including minorities like Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seen in that context, antisemitism is just one aspect of the broad damage that the adoption of this new secular religion by those in charge of education has been doing to America. It\u2019s also fueling a surge in racial divisiveness and a war on the canon of Western civilization that is the foundation of a society grounded in the rule of law, which made America a great nation as well as one that was particularly hospitable to religious minorities.<\/span><\/p>\n

That means the stakes involved in whether or not Trump keeps his vow to reform education and to turn the antisemites out are as important as any involving his second-term agenda. It represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reverse the left\u2019s conquest of academia. If he and\/or his appointees falter in their resolve, the consequences for the country as a whole and for Jews will be incalculable.<\/span><\/p>\n

But as the coverage of the issue in liberal legacy corporate media like\u00a0The New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Guardian<\/em><\/a>\u00a0indicates, the educational establishment and their allies on the political left and the press are determined to oppose Trump\u2019s goals. They have already begun a campaign to obfuscate the issue and demonize efforts to roll back the woke orthodoxy as part of what they routinely and falsely describe as the next administration\u2019s putative authoritarian putsch. The truth is just the opposite since the real authoritarians are the bureaucrats and \u201ceducators\u201d who have been imposing their distorted neo-Marxist vision on the country while also fomenting and enabling a new wave of antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ironically, the legal settlement with Occidental, which was celebrated by both the ADL and the Brandeis Institute as a victory in the effort to push back against campus antisemitism, was an indication of just how feeble the effort to counteract woke antisemitism has been up until now.<\/span><\/p>\n

The agreement involved some elements that are necessary such as efforts to train school administrators to be more aware of antisemitism and to take into account the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)\u2019s\u00a0working definition<\/a>\u00a0of antisemitism when dealing with instances of Jew-hatred.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the lawyerly document Occidental signed leaves plenty of leeway for it to evade responsibility for future violations. It can be defended as probably as much as could be achieved in such a negotiation at this point in time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Title VI antisemitism complaints to the U.S. Department of Education\u2014the primary mode of carrying on the fight against this scourge in recent years\u2014involves a lengthy process that has, to date, never resulted in any real punishment for even the most egregious violators of the rights of Jewish students. Stripping a university of its federal funding\u2014something that is a given for any institution that engaged in open discrimination against African-Americans or Hispanics\u2014is the sole remedy that could, if fully implemented, mean a much-needed fundamental change in the way American higher education operates.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as long as schools retain their woke administrators and faculty, as well as curricula that discard traditional standards and help fuel antisemitism, agreements like the one with Occidental are almost certain to fail to create the kind of change that is needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Draining the swamp<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

That is why Trump\u2019s scorched-earth approach is so necessary, even as it is being denounced by the same people who are responsible for creating or perpetuating the current mess as too extreme or even needed at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s stated intention of \u201cdraining the swamp\u201d throughout the federal government is being depicted as evidence of his supposed authoritarian impulses and racism. But this is exactly the sort of argument based on a high-handed dismissal of genuine concerns and problems that have caused so many Americans to lose faith both in our educational system and in Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n

His threats can seem crude to those accustomed to politicians being guarded in their remarks. Yet the events of the last few years\u2014starting with the moral panic about race behind the Black Lives Matter riots and then on to the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism\u2014demonstrated that a restrained \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d approach won\u2019t cut it when the collapse of our most cherished institutions is at stake. Their transformation into purveyors of neo-Marxist indoctrination and toxic ideas that enable hatred for both the West and Jews is a crisis of enormous proportions. It is happening at both the college and graduate levels, as well as in K-12 schools where leftist teachers\u2019 unions have also imposed the indoctrination of critical race theory.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only reasonable response to this disaster is exactly the kind of tough-minded purge that Trump has envisioned. And far from this being an uninformed or extreme approach, Trump and his transition team are consulting with experts like Christopher Rufo, author of an authoritative and essential book on the woke plague\u2014America\u2019s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything<\/em>\u2014and incorporating the ideas of\u00a0\u201cProject Esther,<\/a>\u201d a serious plan for dealing with campus antisemitism produced by The Heritage Foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this has produced panic on the left and even among mainstream liberals who have been conditioned by partisan political rhetoric to believe that Trump is a second Hitler. They worry that he is already going too far in seeking accountability for institutions that engage in racial discrimination and tolerate antisemitism under the guise of DEI \u201canti-racist\u201d policies, believing that somehow this will destroy academic freedom. What his critics fail to recognize is that American education is already enduring a catastrophic transformation that has silenced dissent against woke doctrines that seek to trash the Western canon.<\/span><\/p>\n

A necessary sledgehammer<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

The only way to fix it is with the same sort of Trumpian sledgehammer that tossed aside failed ideas about the Middle East in his first term that enabled him, among other important policy changes, to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and forge the Abraham Accords. If that means executive orders reversing President Joe Biden\u2019s DEI orders that created woke commissars in every federal agency and department, that should be welcomed. If it means closing the largely useless and counter-productive Department of Education and enacting far-reaching reforms that will defund institutions clinging to discriminatory ideas and actions, then that should be cheered by those who cherish the values of equal opportunity, merit and zero tolerance for hatred and discrimination.<\/span><\/p>\n

More to the point, it will mean that policing antisemitism on campus will be shifted away from the ineffectual Title VI complaints to federal education bureaucrats to a campaign of lawsuits conducted not just by groups like the\u00a0Deborah Project<\/a>, valuable though they may be, but by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with all of the vast resources at its command. In this manner, a message can be sent that will likely motivate the vast majority of college administrations to discard DEI and the tolerance of hate for Jews that accompanies it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is impossible to know whether the new administration will succeed. But rather than worrying that he is the wrong instrument to carry out this effort or wasting time decrying his rhetoric, it\u2019s likely that only an outlier like Trump could contemplate such a bold project or have the will to see it to its logical end. Indeed, so grave is the threat that DEI and other leftist ideas pose to the country\u2019s future that anything short of what he has discussed would be inadequate. Instead of expressing horror at his determination to enact real change, fair-minded Americans of all faiths and in both major political parties should be rooting for him to keep his word and to do everything he promised to punish colleges and universities, in addition to any other entity that promotes the sort of woke hate that has made life for Jewish students and anyone else who dissents against the new secular orthodoxy so difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong> is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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America\u2019s future depends on Trump\u2019s promise to punish woke universities Jonathan S. Tobin A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that he will make good on his vow to defund institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Mullett Arena on Arizona State University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117460"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117472,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117460\/revisions\/117472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}