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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

December 12, 2023

Harvard Says Claudine Gay Will Remain President

News, United States /

Despite calls for her removal, Harvard University announced on Tuesday that Claudine Gay will remain in her position as the university’s president.

The Harvard Corporation’s governing board said in a statement that they “reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University. Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.” The governing board did acknowledge that the university’s first statement regarding the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre “should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation” and that “Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the University’s fight against antisemitism.”

Gay has been under fire after saying in congressional testimony that it depends “on the context” as to whether calls for genocide against Jews violates university policy. University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill resigned from her position over the weekend after giving similar testimony. In her apology, Gay told The Harvard Crimson that she “got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures. What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged. Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth.”

The Harvard Corporation also addressed allegations of plagiarism against Gay. “The University became aware in late October of allegations regarding three articles,” the governing body said. “At President Gay’s request, the Fellows promptly initiated an independent review by distinguished political scientists and conducted a review of her published work. On December 9, the Fellows reviewed the results, which revealed a few instances of inadequate citation. While the analysis found no violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct, President Gay is proactively requesting four corrections in two articles to insert citations and quotation marks that were omitted from the original publications.”

The Harvard Corporation’s statement concluded: “In this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay. At Harvard, we champion open discourse and academic freedom, and we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated. Harvard’s mission is advancing knowledge, research, and discovery that will help address deep societal issues and promote constructive discourse, and we are confident that President Gay will lead Harvard forward toward accomplishing this vital work.”

Harvard’s decision to stick with Gay was met with severe criticism.

“President Gay survives to continue as university president, but will Jewish students on campus survive her tenure? Will Harvard finally act against harassment of Jewish students?” Simon Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement. “We await Title VI investigation to hold Harvard accountable for its double standard against Jews. As for calls for genocide against Jews, it depends on ‘context?’ Sooner or later President Gay and the policies she backs will have to go.”

StopAntisemitism posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Just as President Claudine Gay failed to protect her students from rampant antisemitism, the Harvard Corporation has failed to hold her accountable. Despite its begrudging and belated apologies, Harvard richly deserves the Congressional investigation to which it is currently subject, having lost all credibility on matters of antisemitism. The Corporation’s decision serves only to greenlight more Jew-hatred on campus. StopAntisemitism continues to call for President Gay’s resignation, and urges the Corporation to reconsider its decision and hire someone who is committed to protecting every Harvard student.”

Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Higginson Professor of Physiology and Medicine Jeffrey Flier posted on X that Gay and the Harvard Corporation should follow the suggestions outlined in a recent op-ed by Harvard Psychology Professor Steven Pinker, including adopting “a new policy on institutional neutrality as relates to political and social issues,” clarifying “policies to rule out use of violence and intimidation within classrooms and public spaces, and establish meaningful consequences for their violation” and “a serious, data-driven review of DEI policies and administration to clarify those elements that reflect initial and widely supported goals to appropriately promote and achieve diversity and inclusion along many dimensions, while identifying those areas where programs have failed to meet identified and valid objectives.”

“I stand ready to support President Gay in addressing these goals, and others that she may identify as being critical in the course of her efforts,” Flier added.

Regarding the plagiarism allegations, The Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo and The American Conservative Contributing Editor Chris Brunet alleged on Sunday that Gay “plagiarized multiple sections of her Ph.D. thesis.” The Washington Free Beacon claimed shortly thereafter that they found four papers authored by Gay between 1993-2017 in which she “paraphrased or quoted nearly 20 authors—including two of her colleagues in Harvard University’s department of government—without proper attribution.” Following the Harvard Corporation’s statement backing Gay, Rufo posted on X, “They’re lying and they know it. Even Harvard’s student paper ‘independently reviewed the published allegations’ of plagiarism and found that ‘some appear to violate Harvard’s current policies around plagiarism and academic integrity.’”

The Harvard Crimson reported on Tuesday that they investigated the allegations and that while “some are minor — consisting of passages that are similar or identical to Gay’s sources, lacking quotation marks but including citations — others are more substantial, including some paragraphs and sentences nearly identical to other work and lacking citations. Some appear to violate Harvard’s current policies around plagiarism and academic integrity.”

The Crimson talked to some of the authors that Gay has been accused of plagiarizing, including political scientist Dr. Carol Swain. Swain told the student paper that the sections in question “would qualify as plagiarism under Harvard’s own rules.” Swain posted on X that she was “angry” about “the racial double standards that are TEMPORARILY giving #ClaudineGay an opportunity to resign. White progressives created her and white progressives are protecting her. The rest of us have had to work our rear ends off to achieve success. Some get it handed to them.”

Other authors that Gay allegedly plagiarized told the Crimson that they didn’t think the sections in question amounted to plagiarism. One author, Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jeffrey Liebman, told the paper, “It is not surprising when two researchers describe the same statistical procedure or the same government program using similar language.” UC Irvine Professor Emily Owens also told the paper that “the phrases in question are a brief description of how someone aggregates a variable and a summary observation about a specific technical point” and thus are not plagiarism.

The New York Post was similarly told by other authors that they did not believe that Gay plagiarized their work. However, they did talk to one author, Miami University in Ohio Political Science Professor Anne Williamson, who felt that Gay did plagiarize parts of a paper that Williamson wrote in 2011.

“It does look like plagiarism to me,” Williamson told the Post. “If they are going to do what they did, then I should be cited as a reference. My first reaction is shock. The second reaction is puzzlement. There was a way to draw from my paper. All she had to do is give me a credit.”

The Crimson further reported that some of the plagiarism allegations had initially percolated “on anonymous academia forums over the past year” and that the allegations “are sure to cast even more doubt on the embattled president’s fitness for the job, even if she is not in imminent danger of losing it.” Gay had said in a statement on Monday that she stands “by the integrity of my scholarship. Throughout my career, I have worked to ensure my scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards.

Harvard Says Claudine Gay Will Remain President Read More »

You’re 100% Right. Now, Here’s Where You’re Wrong.

Commentary, Opinion /

The following statement is attributed to the head of a yeshiva: “You’re right. You’re one hundred percent right; now, here’s where you’re wrong.” How can someone be not only right, but one hundred percent right, and also wrong?

I think the rebbe was suggesting that nothing is ever completely one way or the other. There is invariably another thought, a nuance, a possibility. There is always room to accommodate another point of view, because no opinion is air-tight, total, complete and inclusive. This obviously does not apply to terrorists whose only aim is to sow death and mayhem.

A problem arises when people do not listen to one another. Really listen. Shakespeare called it “the disease of not listening.” Mark Twain wrote that “wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would have rather talked.” One should note that the words “listen” and “silent” are written with the same letters: Listening requires the individual to stop talking and to pay attention to someone else. And when we do listen, it should be for serious engagement. Stephen Covey said that “most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Eastern cultures are aware of the need for listening. The Dalai Lama said that “when you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.”

Referring to the three Buddhist steps to repairing a relationship, Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh writes that deep listening is challenging to the Western mind “with its individualistic ideal of self-reliance that too readily metastasises into self-righteousness [and] we grow incredibly insecure at the prospect of being wrong.” The purpose of real listening, deep listening, is to restore communication.

The American business community has picked up on this important lesson of deep listening. Speaking to Leadership Academy, body language specialist Jan Hargrave said that “the average person speaks between 135 and 160 words per minute, but the average person’s brain works between 400 and 600 words per minute. This means your mind is going a lot faster than your conversation partner’s mouth, which makes it easy for your mind to drift. It’s up to you to stop your mind from shifting away from the conversation and to be truly present.” Naz Beheshti, executive coach, adds that “a culture of listening is a culture of learning … Deep listeners listen with the intent to learn and connect.”

The culture of deep listening has its roots in the Jewish tradition, as the rebbe’s teaching implies. The importance of listening is stressed throughout the Torah. The most obvious is the Shema Yisrael, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4), expressing the fundamental belief in monotheism. Moses tells the Israelites that God will give them a land as he promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but “they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage” (Exodus 6:9). This verse demonstrates that the condition of slavery is not conducive to hearing a message of importance and urgence. It requires free men and women in a free exchange of ideas.

Jethro, father-in-law of Moses, tells him: “Now listen to me. I will give you counsel and God be with you.” Moses follows his advice to set up a system of courts and all Israel benefitted from Moses’s willingness to listen (Exodus 18:19).

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that teaching and listening are “forms of engagement.” They create a relationship. His term is “active listening,” rather than “deep listening,” but the idea is the same. When parties feel that they have not been heard, that there is a failure of empathy, then resolving a conflict is impossible. Active listening “means that we are open to the other, that we respect them, that their perceptions and feelings matter to us. We give them permission to be honest, even if it means making ourselves vulnerable in so doing … Crowds are moved by great speakers,” he points out, “but lives are changed by great listeners.”

Active listening “means that we are open to the other, that we respect them, that their perceptions and feelings matter to us.”

The preamble to the American constitution begins with the words “We the people” and specifies that the constitution is for “the general welfare” of the nation. Israel’s Declaration of Independence states that Israel was established “for the benefit of all its inhabitants.” These foundational words represent a clarion call for unity through cooperation. We need to heed them today.

If a forum were established in America, where Republicans and Democrats came together to truly listen to one another, not to win, but to understand, not to score points but to gain insight, is it possible that bridges could be built to replace the echo chambers that exist?

If a forum were established in Israel after the war, where religious and secular, those on the left and those on the right, came to listen to the other side, not to repeat what they know, but to learn something new, not with the intent to reply, but to understand and engage, is it not possible that Jews could find common ground instead of divide their threatened country?

Perhaps each side would find that they are one hundred percent right but not perfect. If everyone came to listen and learn, to communicate and engage, would that not be a critical first step? And maybe they would see a way to accommodate the concerns of others.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Waterloo.

You’re 100% Right. Now, Here’s Where You’re Wrong. Read More »

A Light to Illuminate the Darkness: A Personal Reflection on the Legacy of Rabbi David Ellenson, Z”L

Obituaries /

In one of his famous Sichos on Hanukkah, the Lubavitcher Rebbe illuminated the point that in each and every Jew, from the most halachically observant to the most secular, lies an untapped jug of oil that when tapped, is capable of shedding light in a world of darkness. Indeed, this is the legacy of Rabbi David Ellenson Z’L that I have felt profoundly since accidentally stumbling into his class on the history of Israel when he served as adjunct professor at UCLA and USC over 20 years ago.

At the age of 18, I was living life to its fullest, hopping from Latin club to club, spending summers in France and Spain, and enjoying the freedom of living completely carefree with my only worry being when my next pair of Brazilian jeans would arrive from Rio. Moreover, as one of three Jewish girls in my sorority, Judaism was as far from my consciousness as the future ramifications of student loan debt. The world was my oyster (not kosher, I know, but I didn’t care at the time) and nothing would rattle my plans of future greatness as a professor of French existentialist literature. However, this all changed the minute I walked into Professor Ellenson’s class. Moreover, what I thought I would audit for an easy “A” to fulfill a tedious history requirement turned out to be lifechanging in the best of ways. I was transfixed by his profound analysis, eloquence and ability to discuss the complex challenges that the modern State of Israel faces; I was like a deer in the headlights of his grandeur.

What started out as a one-day audit, resulted in me following him like a loyal puppy from class to class until I actually decided to add Jewish Studies as a double major just so I could continue to take his classes. An added bonus was the Jewish History course that he taught alongside Professor David Myers who I then coerced into being my honors thesis advisor. Since the Catholic terminology is the only term that would do this justice, David Ellenson, David Myers, and Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller were the “holy trinity” of Jewish Studies at UCLA where leaving every class left one’s neshama uplifted, inspired and motivated to delve in deeper despite whatever plans I thought I had solidified for my future.

I will never forget our first conversation. I had arrived early to class, and Professor Ellenson and I struck up a conversation about how the other lovely Rabbi Ellenson who I had known at my secular high school turned out to be none other than his wife. David never let me see the letter of recommendation he wrote for me, which I believe resulted in my acceptance to Harvard University, but his lessons of wisdom, humility and profound love for and commitment to the State of Israel have left their indelible mark on my soul. For what it is worth, I did teach AP French for five years, but I also followed in his footsteps in my parallel careers at both USC and Hebrew Union College.

May his memory be a blessing for generations to come and may the majesty of his teachings guide all who follow in his path.

Lisa Ansell is Associate Director of the USC Casden Institute and Lecturer of Hebrew Language and Hebrew Learning Coordinator at Hebrew Union College.

A Light to Illuminate the Darkness: A Personal Reflection on the Legacy of Rabbi David Ellenson, Z”L Read More »

Since Time Immemorial, Jews Have Been Colonizing Ideas

Editor's Note, Featured /

One of the more fashionable accusations one hears against Israel these days is “colonizer.” The implication is that the Jewish state is this predatory regime out to take over neighboring lands and impose its own cultural norms.

But a quick glance at a map of the Middle East shows 22 Arab/Muslim nations surrounding a tiny Jewish state, which controls a full 0.1% of the total land mass. Some predator.

Another alleged sin of colonization is the erasure of peoples. But if anything, it is the Jews who have been erased from the Middle East. Until the 1960s, approximately one million Jews lived in Arab and Muslim countries, having arrived in the region more than 2,000 years earlier. Most of them had to flee after the birth of Israel. Today, only around 15,000 Jews remain.

Meanwhile, despite living in a Jewish state, the Arab population has mushroomed since the birth of Israel, going from 156,000 in 1948 to 2.6 million today. In the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian population has grown from 2.9 million in 1997 to 4.9 million today.

In other words, if you’re going to call the Jewish state a colonizer state, make sure to mention that it’s one hell of a lousy colonizer.

There is, however, one thing that Israel and Jews in general are particularly good at colonizing: Ideas. Colonizing ideas means entering a field and coming up with ideas to improve it. This Jewish trait drives Jew haters nuts because it’s not land-related, it has nothing to do with race or skin color, and it goes directly against the leftist narrative of Jews as the ultimate white oppressors.

From its beginning, ideas have been a defining trait of the Jewish tradition.

In trying to define Judaism, the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asked: “What is Judaism? A religion? A faith? A way of life? A set of beliefs? A collection of commands? A culture? A civilization? It is all these, but it is emphatically something more.”

Judaism, Sacks wrote, is also “a way of thinking, a constellation of ideas: a way of understanding the world and our place within it. Judaism contains life-changing ideas.”

The life-changing ideas that have come out of Israel in recent decades are so numerous, so ubiquitous, it’s almost boring to try to list them. Whole websites are devoted to Israeli innovation in fields such as public health, food security, disease prevention, water conservation, renewable energy, cancer treatment and countless others. On a per capita basis, no other nation comes close to Israel’s record of contributing to the welfare of humanity.

Jewish ideas, however, go beyond innovation. There are also timeless ideas dealing with life and morality. It’s always interesting to see how non-Jews describe these contributions.

The Catholic historian Paul Johnson wrote:

“To the Jews we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person, of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption, of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.”

The second U.S. president, John Adams, described the Jews as “the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation ancient or modern.”

In September 1897, a half century before the Holocaust, author Mark Twain had this to say about a stubborn people that punched above its weight:

“His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him.”

To give you a sense of the Jewish pioneering spirit that built the country, this is Twain in 1867 describing the rough land that would one day become Israel:

“…a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds, a silent mournful presence…We never saw a human being on the whole route…There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

It’s humbling to have to live up to praise from high places, but humility itself is a crucial Jewish value, embodied by the humblest of our biblical figures, Moses. Israel and the Jews have had their share of failures; we’ve been humbled throughout our history. It is the idea of learning from our failures that has saved us.

Our Bible has also kept us humble. God never asked us to take over the Egyptian empire that enslaved us. Since time immemorial, our covenant has limited us to a tiny piece of land from where, today, we get to colonize ideas to benefit the world.

Not all ideas, of course, are worth colonizing. There are ideas that ennoble and ideas that diminish. Ideas that seek power for the sake of power, promote permanent victimhood, judge people by their skin color or ethnicity and replace truth with ideology, are ideas that diminish.

Ideas that bring out the best in humanity are ideas that ennoble.

The idea that Israel is a colonizer state diminishes not just the truth but hope itself. Had the Palestinians emulated Israel’s approach to colonizing ideas, we would not see a war in Gaza today but a beachfront Riviera full of Israeli tourists and a thriving economy.

Jew haters can continue to spread their lies and hatred on college campuses and elsewhere, accusing Israel of being white colonizers and calling to “globalize the Intifada” and “gas the Jews.”

But the haters are no fools. They know that if the Jews were poor and powerless and Israel was a failed state, no one would pay attention. They’re paying attention because for the past 3500 years, Jews have invested in the power of ideas.

That power isn’t going anywhere.

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