Harvard University’s antisemitism taskforce appointee is (wait for it) an antisemite

GURPS · Jan 21, 2024

Harvard University’s antisemitism taskforce appointee is (wait for it) an antisemite

By Andrea Widburg

I can help just a little bit with the latter issue. Islamophobia arises because at least 10% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims actively subscribe to Sharia law, which explicitly calls for the forced conversion or execution of non-Muslims. For those who resist but are not executed, slavery (sexual or otherwise) and a complete lack of rights (property, financial, tax, etc.) are their mandated fates. Anti-Arab bias arises because Arab-majority countries are overwhelmingly Muslim, so much so that other faiths are banned or deeply oppressed.

According to the FBI, in 2022, long before October 7 caused the festering pustule of antisemitism in America to explode, Jews were far and away the most likely religious group to be the victims of religiously motivated hate crimes, with 3,424 reported instances. In the same year, there were 181 anti-Muslim hate crimes and 97 anti-Arab crimes reported.

I hope that this information helps.

But back to Harvard’s brave new task force. According to Garber, both groups have as their tasks:

examining recent history and current manifestations of bias;

identifying the root causes of and contributing factors to bias-based behaviors on campus;

evaluating evidence regarding the characteristics and frequency of these behaviors; and

recommending approaches to combat bias and to mitigate its impact on campus.

I anticipate a report coming down the pipeline sometime in the next decade or so.

The co-chair of the task force on antisemitism is Derek Penslar, William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. As a Professor of Jewish History, you might think that Penslar has an affinity for all things Jewish. You’d think wrong, though. You see, first and foremost, before being Jewish, Penslar is a leftist—and leftists, whether Jewish or not, hate Israel.

Leftist hatred for Israel has a lot of sources, with the following being my top seven:

Marx was a virulent antisemite, so antisemitism is baked into the leftist cake.
Israel is a Jewish nation, so leftist antisemitism automatically transfers to Israel.
Leftists hate the Bible because God is the biggest challenge to an all-powerful, secular state. Both Jews and Israel are identified with the Bible.
Leftists hate the Bible because it advocates morality, which is antithetical to leftist societal norms. And again, Jews and Israel are identified with the Bible and its morality.
Leftists hate Israel because, after the 1967 War, Israel became a U.S. ally during the Cold War.
Leftists hate Israel because they are completely ignorant of the fact that Jews are the land’s indigenous people while Muslims are the colonists. Having gotten this core fact bass-ackwards, they accord Muslims the groveling respect they give to any people occupied by “white colonialism.”
Leftists hate Israel because they have allied with Muslims in the war against the West, and the enemy of their “friendly” Muslims is also their enemy.
Leftists hate Israel because Israel is a thriving nation of happy, successful people.

Knowing that Penslar is a leftist before he is a Jew explains what the Free Beacon discovered when it took a little dive into Penslar’s past:

Harvard University’s newest appointee to its anti-Semitism task force has called Israel an “apartheid regime” and defended disgraced former Harvard president Claudine Gay amid calls that she be fired for her failure to condemn anti-Semitic protesters at the school.

[snip]

Penslar, who organized other Harvard faculty members to defend Gay, may not be the best fit for the task force. While he has criticized anti-Israel initiatives like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, Penslar has made other claims about the Jewish state that anti-Semites have used to call for the annihilation of Israel.
In August, he signed an open letter alongside hundreds of academics that called Israel “a regime of apartheid.”

“There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid,” the letter states.

The letter asserts that American Jews “have paid insufficient attention to the elephant in the room: Israel’s long-standing occupation that, we repeat, has yielded a regime of apartheid.”

The signatories asserted that Israel has in recent years “grown more right-wing and come under the spell of the current government’s messianic, homophobic, and misogynistic agenda.” The letter calls on American leaders to “restrict American military aid” from being used in “the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Here is more about Penslar:

Background on Derek Penslar, Harvard professor named today by interim president Alan Garber as co-chair of an antisemitism task force. I think Penslar is a terrible selection to co-chair this task force. Here is why: 1) Signed August 4, 2023 “Elephant in the Room” letter about…
— Ira Stoll (@IraStoll) January 19, 2024