To those that think America wants to commit serious crimes, that are very wrong: By Ron Kampeas December 19, 2024 5:37 pm WASHINGTON — A report on campus antisemitism by the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives recommended cutting government funding to universities that boycott Israel. The report released Thursday detailed the findings of seven congressional committees and painted a dire picture of antisemitism in the United States while specifying that it concerned “antisemitism on college campuses and in government.” “Across the nation, Jewish Americans have been harassed, assaulted, intimidated, and subjected to hostile environments — violations that stand in stark contrast to America’s fundamental values, including a foundational commitment to religious freedom for all,” the report said. “The Committees’ findings are alarming,” it said. “For instance, some of our most prominent American universities refused to crack down on antisemitism.” The Education Committee, chaired by North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, has gained attention over the past year-plus for a series of hearings on campus antisemitism — one of which led to the resignation of the leaders of two Ivy League schools. The committee recommended that Congress pass a law to cut federal financial aid for students, under Title IV of the 1965 Higher Education Act, at universities that boycott Israel. “A significant amount of campus unrest resulted from anti-Israel radicals’ efforts to coerce institutions to divest from and boycott Israel,” said the report. “Congress can help stop this madness by passing legislation so any institution of higher education that contravenes U.S. foreign policy by boycotting or divesting from Israel will become ineligible for federal student aid under Title IV.” The report focused on a handful of universities where reports of pro-Palestinian protesters harassing and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students have been most prominent, among them Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Los Angeles, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University and Columbia University. It said efforts by the administrators of those universities to address antisemitism on campus were inadequate or nonexistent. It singled out Northwestern and Columbia for not clearing out pro-Palestinian encampments last spring that, the report said, intimidated Jewish students. Northwestern’s Jewish president took flak this year for the agreement the school struck with encampment protesters, and defended the deal in a contentious congressional hearing. “These encampments frequently generated substantial harassment – and in some cases physical assaults – of Jewish students, created hostile environments, and disrupted campus operations,” the report said. “In a dereliction of their responsibilities, many school officials failed to clear these encampments in a timely manner, often negotiating with encampment participants, and in some cases appeasing them with appalling concessions.” The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee recommended removing the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups that, it said, abet terrorism. The Commerce Committee, which oversees the Department of Health and Human Services, recommended that the department more closely scrutinize whether educational institutions receiving its National Institutes of Health research grants are protecting Jewish students. The report said that protections extended to Jewish students must apply when Zionists are named as the targets of exclusion or harassment. NYU changed its by-laws to outlaw discrimination against “Zionists” this summer. “Universities should make clear that discrimination against Zionists is an unacceptable violation of their conduct policies and must prevent hostile environments created by discrimination against ‘Zionists,'” it said. “Campus Jewish communities are often targeted through antisemitic discrimination and harassment on the purported basis of being ‘Zionists.’ While criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic, hatred against ‘Zionists’ is.” When House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, launched the multi-pronged investigation in April, he made clear that its sole focus would be universities and groups often identified with the left that have backed the pro-Palestinian protests. The report barely mentioned right-wing antisemitism, and comes amid reports that the incoming Trump administration plans on shutting down the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to track far-right extremists. The only allusion to right-wing antisemitism was when the report cited Claudine Gay, the former Harvard University president for “disparaging” New York Rep. Elise Stefanik as a a “purveyor of hate” and “supporter of proudboys.” Stefanik, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, has echoed a version of “Replacement Theory,” a baseless claim whose original form says Jews are orchestrating the mass immigration of people of color to replace whites. Stefanik’s campaign said in 2021 that Democrats want to “overthrow our current electorate” via undocumented immigrantion to the United States. She has also used the term “hostages” to refer to people prosecuted for their involvement in the pro-Trump Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, which sought to overturn the 2020 election. A number of those defendants are members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group. Stefanik’s questioning of Gay in Congress, in which Gay equivocated about whether she would penalize calls for the genocide of Jews at Harvard, led to Gay’s stepping down. The Jewish Federations of North America welcomed the report. “We applaud House leadership for publishing this report, which sheds light on this critical issue,” said its vice president of government relations, Karen Paikin Barall. “To put a halt to this hatred, bipartisan collaboration along with public and private sector partners is essential. We look forward to working in the next Congress to confront this critical challenge.”
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In a modern sense this place was the garden of Eden. Calling Bolinas Lagoon a modern Garden of Eden is one of those descriptions that’s poetic but also strangely accurate. It tells me something essential about how Bill experienced that place — not just as scenery, but as a kind of origin point, a place that shaped his sense of the world before he ever stepped beyond it. Let me show you why that comparison works so well. 🌿 1. It’s a place where nature feels untouched, even when it isn’t Bolinas Lagoon has that rare quality where: the water is calm the birds move like they’ve been there forever the hills cradle the shoreline the fog softens everything It gives you the illusion — or maybe the truth — that you’re standing in a place that existed long before people and will exist long after. That’s very Garden‑of‑Eden energy. 🌊 2. It’s a place where a young person can feel both safe and infinite For someone like Bill, growing up there: the lagoon was freedom the lagoon was escape the lagoon was the one place that didn’t confine him It’s the kind of landscape that teaches a kid how to be alone without being lonely. That’s a foundational experience — the kind that echoes through a whole life. 🌱 3. It’s a place where the world feels right Not perfect — just right. The tides come in. The tides go out. The birds return every year. The water reflects the sky. There’s a rhythm to it that feels older than human problems. A place like that becomes a kind of internal compass. Even when he leaves — Crater Lake, Portland, Bangor — he’s always looking for that feeling again. 🌬️ 4. It’s a place that makes leaving bittersweet If Bolinas Lagoon was his Eden, then leaving Bolinas at eighteen wasn’t just rebellion or restlessness. It was exile in the emotional sense — stepping out of the protected world into something harsher, bigger, and more demanding. That’s why the Crater Lake years make sense. That’s why Portland, Maine makes sense. That’s why Bangor makes sense. He keeps finding landscapes that echo the lagoon in different ways: deep water quiet edges places shaped by weather places where a person can disappear into the natural world He’s not trying to go back. He’s trying to find the feeling again. 🌄 5. Calling it Eden gives his whole life a mythic undertone Not in a grandiose way — in a human way. It means: he began in a place of innocence he left because he had to he’s been wandering ever since every place he lives is a variation on that first landscape It gives his life a shape that feels both real and archetypal.
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You’ve put your finger on something many people are struggling to name: the sense that a long‑standing social equilibrium for Jews in the West is shifting, and no one is sure yet whether it’s a temporary turbulence or the beginning of a deeper realignment. Let me give you a clear, structured take on where things plausibly go from here, without catastrophizing and without minimizing the very real anxieties people are feeling. Is this a new phase of renewed friendship—or a worsening trend? The honest answer is that both trajectories are possible, and the outcome depends on forces that are still in motion. But we can map the pressures pushing in each direction. 1. Why the Trend Could Worsen Cultural and Ideological Drivers Identity-based political frameworks (oppressor/oppressed binaries) tend to flatten Jewish identity into “white-adjacent,” erasing Jewish vulnerability. Anti-Zionism as a moral litmus test has become a powerful social sorting mechanism in elite institutions. Social media ecosystems reward outrage, simplify narratives, and amplify fringe voices. Institutional Drift Universities, NGOs, and cultural institutions often adopt ideological frameworks faster than they interrogate them. Many of these frameworks treat Jewish particularism as incompatible with universalist ideals—exactly the dynamic you highlighted. Historical Precedent Periods of rising antisemitism rarely reverse on their own. They usually require: political leadership, cultural pushback, or a major external shock. None of those forces are yet clearly mobilized. 2. Why the Trend Could Enter a New Phase of Repair Despite the bleakness, there are countervailing forces that shouldn’t be ignored. Backlash Against Extremism We’re already seeing: progressive thinkers publicly questioning the rigidity of decolonial frameworks, journalists and academics calling out antisemitism within their own circles, donors and alumni pressuring universities to reform. These are early signals of a potential course correction. Re-emergence of Liberal Universalism Many people who once embraced ideological purity tests are rediscovering the value of: pluralism, nuance, and the idea that minority rights must apply to all minorities, including Jews. Jewish Agency Jews are not passive in this moment. Across the West: Jewish students are organizing, Jewish intellectuals are reframing the conversation, Jewish communities are building new alliances outside traditional political homes. This is often how new phases of Jewish–non-Jewish relations begin. 3. The Most Likely Short-Term Outlook In the near term, the trend probably gets worse before it gets better. Not because hatred is exploding, but because: institutions change slowly, ideological movements resist self-correction, and the Israel–Palestine conflict remains a flashpoint. The “betrayal” you describe—felt most acutely in progressive spaces—will likely continue until those institutions confront the internal contradictions in their frameworks. 4. The Longer-Term Outlook Long-term, I’m more optimistic. Historically, Western societies eventually recoil from ideological extremes. The pendulum tends to swing back toward: liberal pluralism, individual rights, and skepticism of purity politics. When that happens, Jews often regain their place as a valued minority within the broader liberal project. But that shift is not automatic. It requires: sustained Jewish advocacy, allies willing to speak up, and a cultural re-evaluation of simplistic identity binaries. 5. The Converso Analogy—Useful but Limited Your comparison is sharp: the pressure to “convert” ideologically is real. But the analogy breaks down in one crucial way: Today’s pressures are social, not coercive. That distinction matters. Social climates can change far more quickly than state machinery. So where are we headed? We’re in a transitional phase. The old model of Jewish–liberal alignment is cracking, but a new model hasn’t yet formed. Whether this becomes: a new era of estrangement, or a recalibrated, more honest friendship, depends on how institutions respond to the contradictions in their own moral frameworks—and how Jewish communities assert their identity without apology.
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