I must give the president credit. He has followed his conservative, values-based polices with action in unprecedented ways.
It’s no secret that academia has become a bastion of the most extreme of progressive values over the past few decades. The more elite the institution the
more extreme it seems to have become. The granddaddy of them all is a little-known
school called Harvard University. Schools like Harvard have become strongholds
of woke ideology, especially in the humanities.
These institutions have shifted from being centers of higher
learning that once prioritized academic excellence - regardless of race or
background - to ones where diversity of faculty and administration has taken
precedence. Academic merit has been made secondary to ensuring representation.
This was achieved by actively recruiting individuals from a variety of ethnic
and racial backgrounds to teach young, impressionable students—and by offering
courses that often reflect the political views of those instructors, no matter
how radical they might be. In fact, the more their views challenged traditional
values, the more likely it seemed they were hired.
Courses were developed around these new political
philosophies, many of which stood in direct contrast to the foundational
principles on which higher education was built. In the humanities, merit has
increasingly been sidelined in favor of promoting viewpoints that oppose
traditional perspectives - portrayed as more morally correct by the newly diverse
faculty. As a result, we now see revisionist American history being taught. One
that emphasizes the Founders' racism and the role of slavery in building the
nation, while de-emphasizing or outright ignoring the legacy of Jeffersonian
democracy that made the U.S. the greatest nation on earth.
A similar shift has occurred in how Israel is treated.
Middle Eastern studies departments are often led by Palestinian faculty who
portray Israel as an apartheid colonial state, occupied by European Jews and
funded by the U.S. Which they see as complicit in Palestinian oppression and
even genocide. This is the kind of progressive orthodoxy that now passes for
education in the humanities at schools like Harvard. And this is why so many
Jewish students are harassed - indoctrinated students, influenced by anti-Israel
faculty or sympathizers, many of whom are Jewish themselves.
As I’ve said before, this is what being ‘woke’ is really
about. It’s about replacing traditional values with progressive ones, turning
morality on its head through lies, exaggerations, or even the selective
teaching of facts stripped of context - especially when it comes to vilifying
Zionism as a form of Nazism.
That’s why I’m glad President Trump is standing firm on
withholding billions of dollars in federal funding to Harvard until they
abandon their woke faculty, administration, and agenda. Harvard is the most
well-endowed college in the world. Why should the U.S. give them anything?
Some may argue that most of the $9 billion earmarked for
Harvard is intended for medical research that could now suffer from a lack of
funding. I don’t see why Harvard can’t use part of its massive endowment to
fill the gap. Be that as it may, if maintaining a woke agenda is more important
to them than continuing life-saving medical research, I can't think of a more twisted
set of priorities.
Those of us who care about the Jewish people - and value the
health and well-being of the American public - should welcome this development.
Harvard has chosen wokeism over everything else and willingly forfeited the $9
billion in federal support.
The pushback from the woke left - who’ve appointed themselves the moral standard-bearers of this country - shows that they prioritize diversity over truth and public health. We may all pay a steep price if the ‘Harvards’ of the world don’t step off the woke train and return to valuing merit above woke ideology. Because only then can this nation reclaim the greatness it once had—and achieve the potential greatness that still lies ahead.
