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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27803 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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(can move to the Israel/Palestine thread, but thought I'd post here as it's not geopolitics)

Looks like donors of elite schools are starting to pause their donations to schools due to the Israel/Palestine situation.

Well, rather, by the reaction and statements from some students at those schools, combined with the lack of reaction/statement by the school presidents condemning the initial Hamas attack. It seems donors, like Ken Griffin, are either pressuring the school to change tact, or stopping donations altogether.

Just today, apparently [some Jewish students at Cooper Union] were blocked in a library due to a pro-Palestine/anti-Israel rally](https://twitter.com/stopantisemites/status/1717300476524322969?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ). Not sure why the library only had Jewish students (Hillel meeting?), but seems bad if true.

George Washington Uni. got pro-Hamas projections saying things like "glory to our martyrs" (!!) on school buildings (ironically with donors like "Gelman" right underneath the projections). Protests that shout "from the river to the sea" all over every elite school, from Brown to NYU to UCLA, you name it. And on and on...

Social media wasn't that developed, and I wasn't paying attention, last time the large Israel/Palestine hostage situation happened in 2014, or the situation in 2008. Was it always been like this, pro-Hamas/anti-Israel/ and I just didn't notice? Or is it noticeably larger now, more organized, more tolerated? It's not just US either, it's also in UK, it's in Berlin and Vienna and Paris. Obviously there's big protests in Jordan or whatever, as they are closer and have millions of Palestinians, so I'd expect protests there. But it almost seems kind of shocking how brazen many people are, in NYC!?

Seems like influential folks, even sjw/leftist-friendly (?) youtubers, are realizing the changing cultural winds, and perhaps political winds downstream.

The donors' using their money to cause change is not new, but seems like there is urgency from them to change some of the culture in universities. Will this actually change things, though? My bet is no, Griffin's $300mil will not change how Harvard students think and say. What do you guys think?

edit:

This was an interesting thing, that I was trying to but failing to reference/get at:

In the 1960s, the radical left and black militants engaged in terrorism and mass violence for several years. During that period, a disproportionate amount of money and leadership on the left came from Jews and Jewish organizations. Then the Panthers took the movement by storm and imposed a Third World, anti-imperialist focus on the left, which turned hard against Israel after the Six Day War in ‘67. The Panthers’ anti-Zionism bled over into plain anti-Semitism, and many disillusioned Jews began to back away from the movement. Then, in ‘69, black militants in NYC picked a fight w/the mostly Jewish NYC teachers’ union, and the virulent antisemitism that had been just beneath the surface burst out into the open. The Jewish Defense League was actually formed in the aftermath of the conflict, to protect and retaliate on behalf of Jews who were being harassed and attacked by black militants.

The loss of Jewish support was the end of the ‘60s radical left as a serious movement, and the long march on the institutions began. Now that it’s had a half decade to regroup, it’s back on the streets causing mayhem. As before, Jewish organizers and groups played a disproportionate leadership role w/BLM, campus radicals, and other militant groups, and as before, the movement has turned against Israel and Jews more generally. If the rest of the cycle repeats, turning against the Jews will mark the beginning of the end of this round of left wing madness…

Hopefully we all learn a more lasting lesson this time.

Harvard’s endowment is huge, and everyone could stop donating right now and Harvard wouldn’t notice. If Griffin or Ackman or whatever Twitter busybody billionaire thinks Harvard cares about them, or even notices who they are, they are seriously high on their own supply.

There’s also a less public issue where a lot of these donations are shadily (though not-publicly) invested via the endowment management company into the donors’ PE or VC or hedge funds at exorbitant fees (for a hint of this, check out the composition of Stanford’s board) so their pulling out isn’t costless from the donor’s perspective.

Harvard isn’t prestigious if it’s just an activist shop. Those rich people checks don’t just back Harvard’s bankroll. They are prestigious because people like Zuck went to Harvard, created a giant company from scratch, and then provides well paid jobs to Harvard grads. I’m very skeptical that activist Harvard grads are going to be the hiring managers and law firm partners doling out big checks to recent grads.

I don’t know the end game here but if all the Milton Friedman (and the 30-35% of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews) types quit going to Harvard and started going to Eastern Kentucky State then I am fairly certain in a generation Eastern Kentucky State would be considered a top 3-5 global university.

I don’t know the end game here but if all the Milton Friedman (and the 30-35% of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews) types quit going to Harvard and started going to Eastern Kentucky State then I am fairly certain in a generation Eastern Kentucky State would be considered a top 3-5 global university.

It'll never happen, though. Prestige begets prestige, and there hasn't been a new prestigious university created since Stanford. You can't compete with Harvard unless you destroy it first, and it's always going to look easier to take it back over.

there hasn't been a new prestigious university created since Stanford

CMU was founded 15 years later and is very prestigious in the CS world. As AI becomes more important its profile should rise even higher

That's not the kind of prestige they're talking about. No one is going to become president / a senator / congressman / have any real decision power, really, because they got a tech degree.

We've had presidents from institutions as illustrious as Texas State, UMich, U of Delaware, UNC chapel hill, and Georgia southwestern state. I haven't checked congresspeople but I presume there's even more dubious institutions there. The supreme Court is much more exclusive to prestigious institutions, although there are still some notable recent exceptions (Barrett, who attended a law school ranked 27th).

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