Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism is to close at the end of July, sparking fierce objection from community.
NEW YORK – Leaders of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) at Yale University were notified last week that the center was to be closed at the end of July, sparking a fierce round of objections, suspicions and conjectures in the US Jewish community, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The Yale Initiative is intended to research international origins and manifestations of anti-Semitism, as well as other forms of prejudice. As part of Yale’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies, the initiative also disseminates its findings and research to contribute to policy discussions.
The program was the first US-based institute to research global anti-Semitism, ranging from anti-Israel and anti-Zionism manifestations thereof to other forms of hatred expressed against Jews.
“The short story is this initiative, directed by a non-faculty instructor, was found in its routine faculty review to not have met its academic expectations and has been canceled,” Thomas Mattia of Yale’s Office of Public Affairs told the Post. “This singular action should be viewed in the context of all the continuing work in Hebrew studies at Yale and the provost’s pledge to fund other studies in the area of anti-Semitism.”
Sources who preferred to remain anonymous, however, said the closing of the center resulted from the center’s politically incorrect activities – that is, taking Muslims to task for anti- Semitic and anti-Jewish sentiments.
Yale, sources conjectured, had been angling to mend fences with the Middle Eastern Muslim population, and the Yale Initiative was a thorn in the university’s side.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the center’s closure was particularly disappointing in light of the recent upward trends in anti-Semitism around the world.
“Whatever purported issues and problems arose regarding the Yale Interdisciplinary Center, what was required was a concerted effort to work out the problems rather than ending the program,” Foxman said in a statement. “Especially at a time when anti-Semitism continues to be virulent and anti-Israel parties treat any effort to address issues relating to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as illegitimate, Yale’s decision is particularly unfortunate and dismaying.
“The decision to end the Center was a bad one on its own terms, but it is even worse because it leaves the impression that the anti-Jewish forces in the world achieved a significant victory,” Foxman said.
Lobbying efforts are apparently under way to get Yale to reconsider its decision, sources said.
“We hope Yale will review this unfortunate decision so that YIISA’s critical work can continue,” American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris said.
“In our experience working with YIISA, AJC has been impressed by the level of scholarly discourse, the involvement of key faculty, and the initiative’s ability, through conferences and other programs, to bring a wide range of voices to the Yale campus.”
The Yale Initiative has been an important resource for understanding anti-Semitism, especially in its contemporary manifestations, Harris said.
“YIISA has made considerable contributions to the study of this immense contemporary challenge and lent Yale’s considerable reputation to an issue that remains quite serious,” he said. “If Yale now leaves the field, it will create a very regrettable void.”
Other activists working against anti-Semitism agreed.
“This is a big deal and a major travesty,” Ken Marcus, director of the Initiative to Combat Anti- Semitism and Anti-Israelism in America’s Educational Systems at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, told the Post. “YIISA was the most important university-based anti-Semitism research institution in North America. The decision to close it was clearly political, and it smells very bad. I hope it gets wide attention.”
You mean JINO’s? Forget it, they won’t even stand up for themselves no less israel and whether they admit it or not the Jews are under attack.
If you want to know how could millions of Jews go passively to the ovens? Just look at American Jews today. Tragedy is, I don’t think most understand and know they are being targeted. American Jews are all but a dead species.
I believe Caroline Glick has a handle on the Yale debacle.
In a time when we should be working to eradicate anti-Semitism, Yale has decided to support anti-Semitism, SHAME.
How about American Jewish organizations speaking out with outrage.
If you sit idly by and do or say nothing, it won’t get better.
American Jews need to stand tall and be heard.
The Anti-Defamation League is criticizing a decision by Yale University to cancel a program dedicated to the study of anti-Semitism…. .The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism was discontinued after a faculty review committee concluded it did not meet the universitys standards for research and teaching…. .The Anti-Defamation Leagues national director Abraham Foxman says the decision leaves the impression that the anti-Jewish forces in the world achieved a significant victory. …
The left and the petrodollars are sleeping together.
I graduated from UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley (law school). Most of the liberal arts faculties are knee jerk leftists. Most have never held an honest real-world job as an adult. I was not aware of any who had ever started or managed a business. Anyone with conservative views either finds academia, with its pervasive leftist ideology, repugnant; or, more commonly, is simply denied opportunities. Faculty hire and give tenure to fellow politically correct leftists. The trustees need to clean up the mess. The faculties can not; they are the mess. The administrations cannot, for the same reason.
The leftist ideology was always the problem; and now there is the problem of Arab money buying influence practically everywhere. Anyone who is pro-Israel or expresses concerns about radical Islam can not get hired.
keelie, you got that right.
Our colleges and universities are dominated by liberal left wing academia buffoons, most of whom never held a real job, became professional students brainwashed with liberal left ideology, later becoming liberal professors themselves.
Trustees of these colleges and university need to do the job they were selected to do. Not only overseeing the financial responsibilities but more importantly the institution is as you state educating and not indoctrinated.
Lt Col Howard…
Simply viewed – certainly from our (outside) viewpoint – Yale and most of the other US (and Canadian) universities have been seized by those whose intent is destructively ideological. My own feeling is that their faculties are so deeply entrenched that only an academic revolution will restore a reasonable balance and rid these institutions of the bindings and gags of political correctness.
It may take the formation of new universities by those who have contempt for Marxism; universities supported by parents who want their children to be educated, not indoctrinated.
” …poor little lambs
who have lost our way,
Baa Baa Baa… “
At a minimum Yale should have conducted a series of extensive reviews with a detailed listing of shortcomings and a list of the steps to be taken to overcome them. This should be part of the public record.
When Yale kicked ROTC off-campus , I was a very good friend of Kingman Brewster, then the president of Yale. I offered from my background as a former instructor at Harvard and subsequently a professor at two major universities to meet with Prof. Brewster and then review all of the other academic offerings on campus that might be less worthy than ROTC for academic recognition. Kingman politely turned me down and Yale kicked her ROTC off from the campus.
I’ve also viewed stupid downsizings at USC and UCLA. Often they stem from faculty or administrators who sincerely (and dumbly) believe that these are less than fully worthy of campus recognition. Other reasons include student registration, grants, breakeven points.
The Jewish community has every right to be suspicious. Yale and other universities have often done things in the dark that they should not be proud of.
Therefore, if I were the Jewish community I would call upon Yale (actually, in fact ,demand that Yale) release the full transcripts of their evaluation and defend their evaluation against all the other institutes and other similar organizations have on campus.
All of the top US universities would be much weaker academically without Jews. 30% of the faculty at Ivy League Schools are Jewish. Yale is the prostitute of the Arab oil sheiks. Maybe Yale in exchange for the millions of dollars they receive from the Saudis, can replace Jewish faculty with citizens of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is only 10 centuries behind the rest of the world!
Other studies? Why no mention of what those other studies are? Unless this is the “universalism” currently being preached elsewhere which divorces aggression between religious believers and non-believers and places criticism on Islam and Judaism on strict equal legalistic terms, out of context. And studying Hebrew is no reassurance. Eichmann bragged about speaking Hebrew.
The implication that all non-Jews are inherently antisemitic doesn’t seem like a healthy or accurate generalization.
The public, annual, euphemized antisemitic hatefest I see at the University of California, Irvine is due almost entirely to the machinations of the MSU (Muslim Student Union) and a few useful dhimmidiots. It never existed prior to the appearance of said organization.
Buddhism and Hinduism don’t have any antisemitic components at all.