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Rose Horowitch
The Atlantic
Excerpt: Even before the Ivy League upheavals of the past two years, Jewish students had been slowly drifting away from the elite campuses of the Northeast. Now, as some seek respite from the protest movement that erupted after the Israeli response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel, the drift has become more like—sorry—an exodus. And selective colleges outside the Northeast, sensing an intensifying disdain for Ivy League schools among Jewish teens and their parents, are tripping over one another to recruit these students.
Frank Bruni
New York Times
Excerpt: What Trump and his allies are doing is no targeted effort to correct that. It’s a sweeping, indiscriminate, performative smackdown of elite institutions by a crew trying to solidify its power under the banner of anti-elitism. It doesn’t attempt to usher those institutions from a place of bias and extremism to one of neutrality and moderation. It answers excess with excess, orthodoxy with orthodoxy, censorship with censorship. And it disregards the damage it’s doing.
Cathy Young
The Bulwark
Excerpt: Last week's right-wing freakout over the Cracker Barrel logo redesign—apparently amounting to white-guy erasure—had more than its share of sublimely ridiculous moments. But none, perhaps, were more emblematic of the current “anti-woke” crusade than the call to action from author, activist, and Manhattan Institute fellow Chris Rufo.
Of course, what also makes it noteworthy is that Rufo isn’t just some random social-media blowhard. In recent months, he has emerged as the unofficial ideologue of the Trumpian assault on the liberal cultural establishment.
Yael Halevi-Wise '97
January 11, 2024
In the interest of free and accurate speech, please note that the alternative motion proposed by Cary Nelson and Russell Berman, did indeed mention Israel and Palestine too, as you can see here:
EMERGENCY MOTION FOR MLA DELEGATE ASSEMBLY January 2024 (1/2/24)
BACKGROUND: The October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israeli towns and kibbutzim was followed by a major war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. These events have produced a unique and extremely contentious series of North American campus debates, demonstrations, and bitter social media messages with highly stressful consequences for students of varying ethnicities and political beliefs. Controversy surrounding a congressional hearing featuring three university presidents’ campus responses spread worldwide
(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/us/harvard-mit-penn-presidents-antisemitism.html). Students from a variety of backgrounds have testified to feeling unsafe on campus as a result of the hostile climate created
(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/college-campuses-rattled-israel-hamas-war-60-minutes/). Some have felt the right to express their political, cultural, or religious beliefs threatened.
Disagreements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have a long history in English and foreign language departments. MLA’s Delegate Assembly itself has a long history of debating relevant motions and resolutions as well. Rather than press the DA to take sides in these debates, we are urging MLA’s Executive Council help preserve an educational environment where all feel free to voice their positions and concerns.
MOTION: The MLA DA moves that the MLA EC take immediate steps to urge university administrators to defend from threats, harassment, and violence all faculty members, students and staff, regardless of their position on the conflict in the Middle East. As part of that effort the DA asks the EC to write to all North American English and language departments to ask their aid in preserving their campuses as civil environments for academic freedom and free expression.