When did America get screwed?

By: Ricardo Israel - 18/12/2023

At what point had Peru been screwed? is the rhetorical question of Zavalito, the young journalist (perhaps the writer himself), in “Conversations in the Cathedral”, one of the most important novels by Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and since then it has been incorporated into the world, to be used in other countries, and as a professor in Essex said, once an idea is expressed, it no longer belongs to the person who started it. For me, the author's intention was not to answer it by looking at the past, but as a tool to analyze both the present and the future, since, by isolating the origin, it can be overcome and, therefore, improved.

In the case of the United States, for me it has a date and name. It was the appearance of the presidents of three prestigious universities before Congress (Commission on Education, House of Representatives) on Tuesday, December 5, 2023. These are Liz Magill, Sally Kornbluth and Claudine Gay, presidents of the University of Penn (sylvania ), from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard, respectively, that is, elite universities in the United States, and therefore in the world, since in few rankings the USA has the type of prestige and leadership that it still retains among the best universities, institutions where leaders continue to graduate, including government authorities and executives of important transnational companies. And from the whole world.

Before, in different years, I took classes at several universities as a visiting professor, and I settled, perhaps permanently, for family reasons in April 2019. This time, many things surprised me such as their cultural war, polarization, lack of consensus , the deterioration process that I have called the “Latin Americanization” of its politics, activist and biased press, finding that part of the elite does not like the USA as a power, very slowness to react unitedly to the challenge posed by China and, worsening of the disinterest in an outside world that, paraphrasing Ciro Alegría, is seen as “wide and alien.”

But nothing, absolutely nothing prepared me for what is happening today in their universities with Judeophobia unleashed there and in the streets of the country.

Without a doubt, it marks a before and after, the fact that these three authorities had refused to answer with a yes or no if the genocide of Jews was unacceptable and if this hate speech was punished by the internal regulations of their universities. Would it be acceptable to any other group? The answer is no, and what happened is in no way polarization but simply moral bankruptcy, the opposite of what one assumed the United States represented. What happened happened because there is a deep crisis, division in the face of events where consensus had historically existed, and according to random interviews on TV, there was also no mass condemnation among students who are not Jewish.

Perhaps it happened because the crisis is such that it is not just about three people, but the problem is so institutionalized that there could be hundreds, so the attitude of that trio would be just an expression, making the situation doubly serious. serious as it is representative of those institutions, whose actions today require a strong debate in society. It also requires action from Justice, Congress and the White House, since it exposes a problem where the fear of Jewish students and academics has been accompanied by demonstrations of support for Hamas terrorism, and behavior towards Israel and Jews that would envy the rectors of German universities in the 30s.

While I watched on TV those university authorities go from bad to worse with the double standard, I was very shocked by the testimonies presented by Jewish students, women and men, about the situations that were experienced daily in their teaching places, and that to them They reminded them of experiences they had only picked up from their European grandparents, not their American parents, as if hate speech had skipped a generation. It is striking that these events appear where the Jews feel very safe, and it is inevitable not to remember two tragedies that occurred precisely where the Jews felt that way, by the way, Germany in the 1930s and Spain in 1492.

The truth that has been demonstrated in these days is that the only true reason that could prevent a new holocaust in the future is the existence of Israel, since what has been observed in the USA is also a behavior that for years has been easy to find through of the West and the Third World, it's just that the USA is the place where one supposed there was still defense against this type of hatred, representative of humanity's oldest phobia. It was assumed that after the level of violence and perversion of October 7, there would be an outpouring of sympathy when the opposite ultimately happened, despite the fact that since the Holocaust there had not been a day with so many Jewish deaths, so much so that Israel declared no one. further attack on the perpetrators, but officially went into a state of war, which had not happened since perhaps 1973.

After Israel, the USA was the country where it was mistakenly assumed that these things did not happen to Jews just because they were Jews. And they pass them. Hence the impact of what happened in Congress, and there is no way to qualify it, no matter how much CNN attributes it to the personal agenda of the representative for Florida who initiated the interrogation, or that El País of Spain relativizes or defends the university students.

No matter how you look at it, it is a before and after. I saw it on C-SPAN, the network specializing in public affairs coverage, and I was very shocked, silent, and afraid of what I had witnessed. Furthermore, it is likely that not even at the time of the predominance of racist laws, Congress would have witnessed the same testimony from three presidents of those universities, places of supposed defense of diversity and where their authorities are today the expression of an intellectual class. that influences the USA and much of the world. Perhaps they would have acted better or worse, but it is still difficult, at least in terms of impact.

And without a doubt, they are part of a new elite, which apparently does not believe in the idea of the USA as the political leader of the world, but rather that it be replaced by a global agenda, where it is Washington that must adapt. Unexpected for someone like me who does not hesitate to prefer that the Chinese onslaught be imposed.

These three presidents showed in their statements an arrogance that one does not expect from these institutions or their highest authorities, although Google provides little insight into whether they have resumes worthy of that position. I even got the impression that they did not know something basic about the institutions they presided over, since, if I am correct, since they are private, unlike public ones, they are not 100% subject to the first constitutional amendment. But, by receiving federal funds, they are obliged to protect all students, both from harassment and discrimination, that is, exactly the opposite of what they seemed to understand, by getting tangled up with the issue of “context”, which simply did not apply. .

There is something else that is happening with universities, in the world and also with those that these presidents represent, which are powerful institutions, but today empty inside of moral duty. The university is an institution that has fundamentally not changed its essence for more than a millennium, since its appearance in Bologna in 1088, but the ethical component escaped that trio.

In addition to the double standard, the crisis of mission and meaning that affects them was evident. What a hard blow they dealt to the idea of the United States as a “beacon of light” for the world, in addition to questioning the quality of the teaching provided, since their students shout “from the river to the sea” without knowing which river or sea they were from. speaks, so we must fight to return to a culture of merit, and a selection of students and teachers based on their brains rather than their appearance.

The president of Penn resigned, there was silence at MIT, closing ranks behind its president, and Harvard supported her after a debate and mobilization of her supporters, who in a public statement argued that she had essentially acted well. Officially it was also supported against accusations of plagiarism that were disguised as “inappropriate citations”, which is not something minor in a prestigious university, and perhaps it will have consequences, since it indicates a deterioration of the minimum levels expected in an academic career. that for the position she should be of excellence, and that Ms. Gay is demonstrating that she is not.

In short, three responses to the same fact, and in the case of Penn, everything indicates that money played a role, since the important reason for Liz Magill's departure seems to have been the issue of donations, for example, the publicized threat of the withdrawal of US$100 million by a wealthy former student.

Clearly an ethical crisis exists when, in the university system, research interests are subordinated to the stimuli of government or institutional money, to the penetration of Chinese money and petrodollars, which have diminished the importance of Jewish philanthropy, as has now been proven. .

The underlying issue is not a more or less resignation that will not change anything, and the worst mistake of the United States and the Jewish community would be to focus on this point, and not address the ideology behind it, which seeks to replace education. due to indoctrination and dogma, the appearance of the “cancel” culture, where hatred of Israel has become widespread as well as the very idea of what the United States represents is also attacked daily, which would no longer be a source of good contributions. to humanity, but in the vision of very influential people within many large, medium, and small university institutions, it would be the origin of many evils, including “systemic” racism and the reproduction of patriarchal society, as well as imperialist diffusion. .

That it is not true is another problem, since it is a narrative that imposes itself on the facts.

This includes Israel and the Jews, who magically cease to be a tiny minority of 16 million among 8 billion, to once again become the source of all evil, the egg of the snake to be eliminated, even if it is violent. . In the division of the world between “victims” and “victimizers”, they have been arbitrarily incorporated into the second list, as if the Holocaust had never existed, and, in fact, a recent You Gov/The Economist poll showed that 1 in 5 young people have no information about this fact. That is, a direct consequence of something that I count myself among those who have denounced it for a long time, which is the quasi-disappearance of the humanities in the university system, since, when they are displaced to internal marginality, totally ignorant students are graduating example from history, since when they are needed most to make sense of a world where social networks predominate, they are losing importance.

In other words, nothing is going to change if the Jewish community does not take off its gloves, for which it should not be content with some resignations and new authorities with promises that cannot be fulfilled, as long as it does not go to the bottom of the problem and there is a discussion, inside and outside the institutional walls, about how today the university denies itself, with attitudes such as the current wave of Judeophobia. Furthermore, some like Harvard had flirtations with Nazism prior to the Second World War, from which they unfortunately got away rather unpunished.

I am sure that the community leaders are doing everything possible, but this today may be insufficient given the dangers that lurk, including at the political level the so-called progressivism, and also the difficulty of answering the question of what happened to an important part of the world left with the Jews? In the universities, what we have witnessed is not new, it is just that today what has existed for a long time is more visible, since it coincided with Gaza. The reaction of the Jewish community must resort to some of the best that the United States has and which is a very powerful and proven system of victim defense. That is to say, a truth to be repeated, that the best defense of the Jews is to go on the offensive, and according to the best tradition of the USA, that place is the courts.

Resorting to the courts of justice is justified by the fact that the problem has been going on for a long time, as those students denounced it, without whom we might not have had the presence of these authorities in Congress.

Going to court is the way, and from now on, a main objective should be to sue large universities, on the one hand, and, on the other, their authorities by name and surname to hold them responsible. The purpose is to ensure that there is no personal or institutional impunity, and in the case of the authorities, to also hold them financially responsible with monetary punishments that help a fund that in the future contributes to avoiding the oblivion and repetition of these events, although paying with money is secondary to the deterrence effect.

This recourse to the courts should also be accompanied by demands towards the media that have had a clear participation in what has been built for so many years. I don't think about small ones, but about the BBC, CNN or the New York Times among others, regretting it, since they were for me the standard to imitate, and now I feel that their change on this issue makes them unrecognizable to me.

The judicial route, the complaint and a public debate that includes pressure on the candidates, is the best way to prevent what has been happening from being repeated. And hopefully the legal strategy will now build a case solid enough so that the final objective is to reach the Supreme Court, since in the republican system of the USA, it is the only institution that enjoys the advantage that its decisions are mandatory, not not only for the parties but for all, which makes its system unmatched in other countries, in that its checks and balances far exceed the simple separation of powers.

In other words, a core ruling on the limits of Judeophobia would have almost the same value as a law, with the addition that sometimes the courts arrive before Congress and the White House. In this regard, it is enough to see how the rulings on Rosa Parks and other emblematic cases preceded the Civil Rights laws. Given the difficulty in reaching political agreements in Congress, this path could be faster to protect Jews.

However, I still do not perceive that the Jewish community is already taking off its gloves in the USA. It seems to me that an attitude still predominates whose speed does not seem appropriate to what is being experienced, and in my opinion a greater speed of response is needed. The moment is very difficult and no one is going to do for the Jews what they are not willing to try for themselves.

The response must also include learning from other groups and collectives, in addition to something as un-American as observing the rest of the world, to extract lessons and teachings, always with the objective of protecting the Jews who live in this country, and as an extension to Jews from the rest of the world who do not live in Israel, since, if a community with the resources of the United States and the rights granted by the constitution cannot do it, then where?

In this regard, there is something that was left floating in the air after the participation of the three presidents in Congress. It was the answer to the question of whether the three would have acted the same, if they had been other groups or collectives.

And very illustrative of the theme of this column is that the response was evaded, even by representatives and senators. I understand that the fear of cancellation is very present, a situation where the responsibility of the university system in normalizing violence against those who think differently has been great, and with too much impunity from its authorities. In the media, the truth is that I have heard only two panelists respond directly, both African-Americans, who bravely said that, if they had been African-American students, the same thing would not have happened to them. And with admiration I say that I am very happy that you point it out with a conviction that I do not see in others. And I insist, we are talking about the United States, and probably a case of self-censorship is taking place here.

That is the point. Surely if it had been other groups, these three presidents would not have hesitated or remained silent for a second, and the teachers and students guilty of attacks and hateful opinions would have been immediately disciplined, at least suspended. That is to say, just as the topic deserved, there would have been no need to look for the “context” to see if it was “acceptable” to repudiate the genocide of Jews (yes, it was a specific question). No matter how old this hatred is, what is surprising about the university authorities is the protection they have given to the demonstrations and the evasion of their responsibility. Additional reason to go to court, so that the sanction helps prevent the level of hypocrisy that we have witnessed from being repeated.

The United States changed after the 1960s, and although today, the African-American community is still subject to discrimination, it nevertheless has a defense that makes those who fall into those conditions pay the price, at least in universities and the media. hate speeches. And sometimes, it is automatic, which deserves applause.

That is a model that can be tried to imitate today, since, in the case of the press, there is a Jewish presence of journalists and columnists. And in universities, there are strong numbers of students and teachers.

But they are not seen to the extent that the time demands, and when they appear they do so more on an individual level than making their collective weight felt. The example there should be those admirable students who brought out and publicly the aggression problems they are experiencing. I believe that it is not too much to ask that Jewish communities imitate, with their weight, what their young people have managed to do, a very good seedbed for the community's future.

As at other times in its history, community leadership is needed that does not have any complexes or leave the door unknocked. What is happening is too serious to have doubts.

It remains to mention other efforts that must be made by Jewish communities, this time not only in the United States, but also in other countries, but where their leadership and the contribution of human and material resources may be necessary. The first is collaboration with Israel in the efforts made for the Heshborah or clarification, which simply is not giving and has not given the expected result, which is why it is necessary to add all the talents and wills that we can, including the speed that social networks demand today. The second is towards the interior of the communities, where it is essential to incorporate all those who wish to confront the difficult moment that is experienced with Judeophobia, the hatred of Israel and also emphasize the pride of feeling part of our history, with special emphasis on the new generations.

A moment that also demands a third front, that of those Jews who not only do not feel like Jews, but are so confused that they attend public demonstrations against Israel or lend their name to groups that support exactly the opposite, for example and just to mention two countries, in Chile to the so-called “Jews for Boric” or “Jews for Jadue” or equivalent in other countries, or in the case of the USA those who have appeared in demonstrations from the “river to the sea”, dressed or disguised as religious, to be generally exhibited, with the argument that there would be no anti-Semitism, since there are Jews participating.

Here an effort is needed to criticize them, which requires moving away from an idea that today is an unnecessary luxury, that internal debates should not be known abroad, when, on the contrary, every effort is welcome to defend communities from manipulations. against them, starting by separating waters with those groups.

In something that happened outside the USA, I can contribute my own experience. On November 17, 2003 in Washington, I went against the State of Chile before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, for the acts of discrimination suffered when I was fired from the University of Chile. To my surprise, I did not obtain the support of the Representative Committee of Jewish Entities of Chile. I never received a (good) explanation, but I suppose it was in order not to affect the official discourse that in Chile there was no institutional anti-Semitism, and today, for the first time in the country's history, there is a recognized anti-Semite governing from La Moneda.

They are not two equivalent countries, in any way, but I do not want something similar to happen to the USA, and that in a few years there will be someone in the White House who does not respect either Israel or the Jews, and that, although marginally, this is due to a lack of activism on the part of the Jewish community or its representative institutions.

By the way, what is of interest to Jews does not have to be of interest to others. Neither do the arguments.

However, at least there is something that is common and it has to do with national security. I am greatly surprised that this aspect has not arisen from the issue that affects Jews and universities. And it is not about the ancient role of the Jews as the “canary” in the mine, the one that serves as a warning that what is happening to them warns of misfortunes that are coming for everyone.

What are we talking about? A case in point, Europe, where its elite received those who came from internal wars or between Middle Eastern countries with a basic and simplistic multiculturalism, from which the USA has not learned. Indeed, it was the situation that was created when various countries realized that their youth were being recruited by ISIS to go to Syria and Iraq, either as combatants or brides. This radicalization of the second or third generation with people born there and moving with those documents, had also affected the United Kingdom when on 7-7-2005 British citizens blew themselves up by bus and metro with 52 dead and many injured.

With the demonstrations in support of Hamas and singing “from the river to the sea,” can anyone seriously assure that this scenario is not going to happen, or, on the contrary, is a future of American extremists being incubated there? Furthermore, there is also no media concern for the State Department to comply with the law in relation to students who, with their speech and acts of hate, are violating the conditions of their visa and who are probably going to remain in the country. Furthermore, it is curious how some groups and collectives repeat themselves in the different demonstrations.

I am still shocked by what has happened in the United States. I never expected something like this and as a consequence, I would very much like to see a more proactive role, above all, in public opinion and in courts of the Jewish community and those who speak on its behalf at the highest level, without which, I fear that something worse could come. However, I accept that the requested level of activity could be taking place, it's just that, as an observer, I don't notice it at the level I would expect.

@israelzipper

Ph.D. in Political Science (Essex) Graduate in Law (Barcelona), Lawyer (U de Chile), former president of the Latin American Association for Studies on the United States, former presidential candidate (Chile, 2013)

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».