The headline comes from a David Burge (“Iowahawk”) Tweet about this letter from Jewish students about events on campus at MIT yesterday:
To all students at MIT,
Today, Jewish and Israeli MIT students were physically prevented from attending class by a hostile group of pro-Hamas and anti-Israel MIT students that call themselves the CAA [Coalition Against Apartheid, apparently].
This is after students from the CAA harassed MIT staff members in their offices for being Jewish and interrupted classes in the past few weeks. All of this has occurred with no clear response from the administration. With each passing day, MIT admin’s silence makes Jewish and Israeli students feel unsafe at MIT.
Many Jewish students fear leaving their dorm rooms and have stated that they feel MIT is not safe for Jews. This message is compounded by the public and private warnings of Hillel and many faculty that Jewish students should not enter MIT’s main lobby today, November 9th, 2023.
Instead of dispersing the mob or de-escalating the situation by rerouting all students from Lobby 7, Jewish students specifically were warned not to enter MIT’s front entrance due to a risk to their physical safety. The onus to protect Jewish students should not be on the students themselves.
MIT administration recently announced guidelines to avoid illegal and unsafe protests on campus. The CAA, which planned the protest, knowingly and proudly violated these requirements, and even invited people from outside of MIT to join them. Their actions inhibit the possibility of safe and peaceful dialogue and endanger Jewish students on campus.
The CAA hosted a blockade that not only disregards MIT guidelines, but also obstructs Jewish students from attending classes.
Some Jewish students who saw the administration’s failure to respond to the targeted harassment of Jews on campus by the CAA came together to support each other and peacefully together stand against this threat to their safety.
Four hours after the blockade started, at 12 pm, the MIT administration passed a letter to all students, threatening their suspension if the crowds did not disperse from Lobby 7. Only the Jewish students left immediately. The CAA protesters did not cooperate. Indeed, the CAA proceeded to invite more students and non-MIT protestors to join them in calling for a violent uprising (“Intifada”) and justifying the terror attacks of Hamas on Israeli civilians.
At 5 pm, all students on campus were warned through MIT’s emergency notification system to “avoid Lobby 7” –– officially recognizing the danger present to students as a result of this violent protest. No Jewish or Israeli students were present at this point.
As of 10:30 tonight MIT has officially decided not to academically suspend CAA students who repeatedly violated the administration’s guidelines and threats. They have shown that actions against Jews at MIT do not have consequences. Additionally, in an email to DUSP students, the Department Head indicated that he would protect any DUSP students involved in violating MIT’s rules today by protesting with the CAA. Not only do Jewish students feel unsafe on campus, but now they also feel excluded from and unsafe in DUSP.
Today, on the 9th of November, on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which marked the beginning of the Holocaust, Jews at MIT were told to enter campus from back entrances and not to stay in Hillel for fear of their physical safety. We are seeing history repeating itself and Jews on MIT’s campus are afraid.
Signed, The MIT Israel Alliance and its supporters
When is MIT going to start expelling its anti-Semitic students, and arresting non-students for trespassing on campus? Of course you know the answer to this.
Chaser: It would seem this kind of crazy has been right at home at MIT for a while now. From the Global Studies and Languages, Global Borders Research Collaboration in the MIT Anthropology department, 2016:
This talk examines the relation between Islamophobia as the dominant form of racism today and the ecological crisis. It looks at the three common ways in which the two phenomena are seen to be linked: as an entanglement of two crises, metaphorically related with one being a source of imagery for the other and both originating in colonial forms of capitalist accumulation. The talk proposes a fourth way of linking the two: an argument that they are both emanating from a similar mode of being, or enmeshment, in the world, what is referred to as ‘generalised domestication.’
[Speaker] Ghassan Hage has held many visting positions across the world including in Harvard, University of Copenhagen, Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and American University of Beirut. He works in the comparative anthropology of nationalism, multiculturalism, diaspora and racism and on the relation between anthropology, philosophy and social and political theory.
More evidence of the Hamas wing of the climate cult.
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