Israel Matzav

Why the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) is closing down

In an earlier post, I wrote about the closure of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA). I suggested that the hints that it was being closed down due to 'politically incorrect activities' might have suggested that it was being closed to appease Muslims. Yale graduate student Matthew Knee says that's not quite what happened. The center is being closed because the Jews weren't comfortable with what it was telling them.

However, YIISA could not have succeeded so long as the Yale student body, especially the Jewish community, remained unwilling to hear the ideologically-inconvenient truths about a hatred that disproportionally exists in communities that leftists love to love. YIISA events were sparsely attended by Yale students, and apparently, relevant classes were underenrolled as well. Those who point out that the PLO condemned a YIISA conference on global anti-Semitism fail to note that the Jewish community at Yale did not come to YIISA's defense in any significant way. While I found many references to the controversy searching the Yale Daily News web site, I found no examples of the organized Yale Jewish community standing up for YIISA.

I recall talking with other Jewish students about YIISA, including some who were directly involved. The complaints I heard were consistent. Yale students consider the study of anti-Semitism of the sort YIISA examined to be a "right wing" pursuit. They complained that YIISA was too focused on Europeans leftists, Israel-haters, and particularly, Muslims.

This was unsurprising considering the far left nature of the Yale Jewish Community. While I was on campus, Yale Friends of Israel (YFI), Yale's allegedly pro-Israel student organization, had so big a tent that one of their leaders told me, at the height of the controversy over "The Israel Lobby," that even Walt and Mearshimer's views should be welcomed as a form of pro-Israel viewpoint. This was met with approval by nearby YFI members.

YFI has not been all bad. It does engage in some pro-Israel programs in addition to anti-Israel ones, especially cosponsoring pro-Israel events that were happening anyway, such as YIISA events or the Yale stop on the Dershowitz book tour du jour, or letting various outside Jewish organizations come present their usual inreach and training programs. However, Yale's Jewish organizations have consistently failed to advocate for Israel or the Jewish community in a public and aggressive fashion when it was not politically correct to do so.

Read the whole thing. Sometimes we really are our own worst enemies.

Labels: anti-Semitism, Muslim anti-Semitism, Yale University

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:56 AM