Haviv Rettig Gur
The American university of today allows the enemies of the Jews to tell the Jews' story. Massad is the classic old Arab elite ideologue who thinks Israel is just another version of French Algeria. He's been a laughing stock for decades - until the university itself became as silly as he is. And so many Jewish faculty members, especially the historians who know our story, have mostly gone quiet in fear and cowardice. Where are you, Jewish historians? Where did you disappear to in this moment of concerted war on our story? Over the past year, I've met countless Jewish students on America's campuses who don't know their story, who hunger to learn, and who don't have anywhere to turn to for wisdom and understanding. Some of them, in their desperation, come to me, an Israeli journalist, to get that story. When do American Jews come to their broad class of scholars, many holding chaired positions established by Jewish donors, to demand that they make themselves heard? That they bring their wisdom to the public debate? The purpose of wisdom, I was taught as a child, is courage. What good is all your wisdom if you remain silent?
Ritchie Torres
Joseph Massad, who is set to teach a course on the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment), denies the antisemitism of October 7th. For Massad, the atrocities of 10/7–like the abduction of an eight-month year old Jewish child—is not an act of antisemitism. It is “resistance” to “Jewish colonialism in Palestine.” 10/7 apologists like Massad are modern oppressors of the Jewish people. To have the story of Jewish liberation told not by Jews themselves but by their oppressors is the ultimate perversion of higher education.