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Daughter of Holocaust survivors may leave job at Columbia due to university’s new antisemitism definition (nypost.com)

submitted 3 days ago by geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia University, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas.

But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding.

For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.

“A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry,” she told The Associated Press. “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”

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[–] fartographer@lemmy.world 39 points 3 days ago (1 children)

She's a professor emerita who seems to have retired two years ago, maybe? Keep lecturing what you'd normally lecture and make Columbia have to argue how they employed an antisemitic Holocaust survivor descendant for 50 years. Make them explain how your teachings became antisemitic if they remained the same for 50 years.

If teaching the horrific catalyst that lead to creating the state of Israel is now anti-Jewish, then something had to have changed. If it's not the lecture and it's not history, then some big ol' fuckery seems to be going on, now doesn't it?

[–] nelly_man@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

It doesn't sound like she's afraid of being sanctioned by Columbia. Rather, it sounds like she's disgusted by Columbia and no longer wishes to be associated with them.