US privileged elite preach diversity but practise intolerance

The views of highly privileged, teenage brats might not be too concerning, but their high tolerance for outrageous views also appears to extend to university administrators.

A pro-Palestine rally event following the recent outbreak of war between Israel and Palestine. Picture: NCA NewsWIRE / Monique Harmer

Among the many depressing realities to emerge in the wake of Hamas’s medieval attack on innocent Israelis is the failure of multiculturalism across the developed world to temper – let alone stamp out – anti-Semitism.

Scores of rallies attended by tens of thousands of Americans popped up across the US over the weekend seeking to justify Hamas’s horrific terrorism.

In Baltimore, speakers at one rally repeatedly called to “end the scourge of Zionism” and “destroy Israel” as cars drove past, honking in approval.

But nowhere is the moral rot more egregious than in the nation’s most prestigious universities, which, for all their talk of “diversity” and “inclusion”, have become intellectual wellsprings of militant intolerance.

Where university students half a century ago protested for free speech and pacifism, a large minority at America’s most elite educational institutions would appear to prefer a holy war alongside the aggressive exclusion of any ideas deemed “harmful” or too contrarian. Incredibly, 31 student organisations at Harvard University signed off on a public statement last week that declared Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”.

The views of highly privileged, teenage brats might not be too concerning, but their high tolerance for outrageous views also appears to extend to university administrators. Harvard’s president was quick to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but his successor, Claudine Gay, said nothing immediately in the wake of last week’s heinous crimes against Israel.

Professor Gay, widely celebrated as Harvard’s first black president, was quick to issue a statement in mid-2020 following the death of George Floyd, saying she “watched in pain and horror the events unfolding across the nation this week, triggered by the callous and depraved actions of a white police officer”.

But Hamas’s brutal murder of well over 1000 innocent people, including around 30 Americans, was not enough to move her until a public outcry compelled a statement that extolled the virtues of free speech.

People raise their fists as they march during an event in remembrance of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Earlier this year, Harvard was ranked last among 248 US universities for enabling free speech on campus, according to a survey of more than 55,000 undergraduates conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. A 2021 survey by student publication the Harvard Crimson found 3 per cent of its faculty identified as conservative, less than 20 per cent as moderate and the rest as “extremely liberal”, which in the US context is more likely to signify support for Palestine.

In June, Harvard offered its employees a two-hour workshop on “addressing microaggressions at work”. Heaven forbid staff accidentally use the wrong pronoun, but mass murder … “well, it’s complicated”. Harvard isn’t the only elite institution exhibiting support for terrorism. Last week at Stanford – the Harvard of the west – a teacher was reportedly suspended for physically separating Jewish students from others in class and downplaying the Holocaust.

Of course, the concerning trends predate Hamas’s latest attacks. In 2022, nine student law groups at the University of California, Berkeley sought to ban any speaker who promoted Israel on campus.

Perhaps part of the cause must be these institutions no longer accept the best and brightest. The growing capture of the Democrats by university elites, as their blue-collar support dwindles, has left one of America’s major governing parties with an existential division.

Much is made of Republican squabbles over Donald Trump and the party’s inability to pick a speaker, but these divides pale in comparison to the minority of Democrats who instinctively sided with Hamas. Last week Democrats in Michigan’s state legislature refused to support a bipartisan resolution condemning Hamas. Prominent congresswoman Rashida Tlaib flies a Palestinian flag outside her office on Capitol Hill.

The Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter – which enjoys wide support among Democrats – issued a repulsive graphic on social media of a Hamas paratrooper above and an “I Stand with Palestine” slogan.

Supporters of Palestine gather at Harvard University to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza at a rally in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres denounced the Democratic Socialists of America rally held in New York in support of Palestine “as an anti-Semitic stain on the soul of America’s largest city”, but for moderate Democrats it’s a very uphill battle.

President Joe Biden delivered one of the best speeches of his presidency last week, aggressively condemning Hamas as terrorists and declaring America’s unequivocal support for Israel. But news reports suggest the President and his very closest advisers significantly changed the text from what was a more lukewarm expression of support. His Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, issued a tweet calling for a ceasefire immediately after the attacks, and then deleted it.

When I went to watch a rally in Baltimore, I was struck by how few Arabs appeared to be in a crowd of mainly young people who you might expect to see at a trans rights march or “save the planet” rally. Most of them were wearing Covid masks. At first it might seem a strange combination, especially given Islamic fundamentalist groups loathe LGBTQ rights. But Black Lives Matter, anti-Semitism and “Covidianism” seem to share a preference for authoritarian, dogmatic approaches to politics.

That America’s elite universities – at the very least large segments of the student body and administrators – have become so infested with odious ideas presages an ominous future. “What I saw at Harvard was a total disgrace. I would run the other way if I saw any of those kids wanting a job from me, I can tell you that,” Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said in a speech last week.

The best hope is their extremism ultimately destroys their prestige, and new institutions of higher learning emerge.