As has been publicized, in the NYU graduation ceremony in Manhattan, Steven William Thrasher [see great upcoming pun] received his doctorate in American studies from the university’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. The Department of Social and Cultural Analysis earlier this month voted to boycott the NYU satellite campus in Tel Aviv over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and their universities. The NYU student government considered resolutions to boycott and divest from Israel and last month the Students for Justice in Palestine received a President’s Service Award. Thrasher is a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, where he holds the Daniel H. Renberg Chair, an endowed professorship focusing on social justice in reporting with an emphasis on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community.
Thrasher, as required, presented the school with the prepared text he claimed he was going to deliver. Once on stage he changed his remarks. He took the opportunity, in the presence of a crowd with widely divergent views on Israel and the political realities of the Middle East, to substitute hatred for inspiration, condemnation for life-affirming cooperation. Thrasher chose that moment to trash Israel as an apartheid state and to push his agenda of severing ties with the Tel Aviv campus. He was “so proud” of NYU’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee labor union and his colleagues in SCA for supporting BDS “against the apartheid state government in Israel.”
In response, a young Jewish women withdrew her application to NYU and wrote the following letter:
I have decided to withdraw from NYU beginning in the Fall of 2019. This decision is made with real sadness as I was very excited to apply early decision to NYU and have looked forward to attending for a many years. My family has a long connection to NYU going back to my great-grandfather X who founded the department of music and was a professor at NYU for many decades... Unfortunately, it appears the NYU my family has known is changing. It has now become clear to me that as a Jew, if I were to attend NYU I would be affiliating myself with an institution that accommodates faculty members and student organizations that are dedicated to anti-Semitic ideologies.
Some on your campus differentiate between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, however, I am not one of those people. This age-old hatred of my people wears different disguises in different generations but its root objective is always the same. I will not stand by as it is allowed to take form at NYU and will certainly not attend an institution where my core beliefs and very existence is being threatened.
That is very lovely and kudos [in Jewish "a groise yashar koyach"] to this brave young lady.
But I have news for her, her parents and all college age kids and their parents. In EVERY university our "core beliefs and existence are being threatened". Really. We don't need to Thrash Dr. Thrasher [I couldn't resist] to realize this. Fundamental traditional beliefs and behaviors are scorned, basic standards of modesty are trampled, and most come out spiritually scarred for life. As I recently posted, the overwhelming majority of professors harbor beliefs and attitudes totally at odds with ours. So why, for crying out loud do parents, at INSANE EXPENSE, continue to send their kids to these places?? Pay 200k to poison your kids minds? You can do that for free!
I don't think that any parents who care about their kid's Jewish identity should be sending [it is a HOTBED for eventual intermarriage]. But especially Orthodox parents. Would they let their daughter invite boys over to have sleepover dates in her room? Would they let their son invite various girls of his choice to their house to sleep over. No, never. Modern shmodern, it is not done.
Instead, they send 18-21 year olds with RAGING HORMONES, and a very limited spiritual backbone and education [if they attended Modern Orthodox schools - which are the only frum kids who go to these places] to a place where having a "sleepover" with members of the opposite sex is almost part of the curriculum. Not to mention the parties, the alcohol, the drugs and all that that entails. May I add the extremely high rates of depression and anxiety of college students, especially those at the "best schools" [see below].
Why is nobody talking about this? Where are all the rabbis? MAYBE they are talking about it. I really don't know. I live on an quiet, remote Israeli settlement, so I really don't know what rabbis are talking about [although I am SURE that they are talking Torah, middos and other GREAT things ויהא חלקי עמהם]. But if they aren't - they should be. It is a scandal that Bnei and Bnos Yisrael are sent to places that educate them in so many ways, both overtly and covertly, to live lives devoid of the most basic elements of what our ancestors readily died for.
I know one well-known educator. His policy is that he [and he expects his staff to follow suit... והמבין יבין] discourages boys from attending secular universities. YU all the way. UNLESS, they got into an Ivy league school. Then he invokes the famous "Talmudic" principle "Ivy League is docheh kol ha-Torah koolah".
What also bothers me immensely is that in pre-war Europe, the Jews worked so hard to be accepted into the best universities and then the biggest BEASTS [I hereby ask beasts forgiveness for the comparison], the most hideous, gruesome, contemptible, abominable, monstrous spillers of Jewish blood and gassers of Jewish babies, were graduates of those same universities - often with doctorates.
Is our memory that short? No. So why do we want to be part of that world, where once again, overt anti-semitism rears its ugly head. And nothing we can do is going to change that because history has proven time and again that NO MATTER how much good is done by Jews, no matter how much we help the economy, no matter how many Jewish doctors heal non-Jewish patients, no matter how many great statesmen, thinkers, scientists, inventors etc. etc. that the Jewish people contribute to the greater society, they will still [with notable exceptions almost always] hate us.
So the best advice was eternalized in the Torah from the mouth of Bilam:
הֶן עָם לְבָדָד יִשְׁכֹּן וּבַגּוֹיִם לֹא יִתְחַשָּׁב
Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.
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From the Harvard Crimson
Every law student has met a lawyer who cannot help but offer the advice, “Don’t go to law school.” The misery in the legal profession is seemingly ubiquitous. The mental health crisis facing modern lawyers has been reported so extensively, it barely needs repetition. Yet the causes have been woefully overlooked.
Why hasn’t Harvard taken responsibility for its contribution to this professional malaise? Last year, we pushed Harvard Law School to begin an annual mental health survey to measure the welfare of the student body. We began writing law school-specific survey questions based on our experience as students and worked with university health researchers and administrators to publicize the survey.
The results presented a grisly reality. Among 886 respondents, 25 percent reported suffering from depression. For context, according to the CDC, 7.7 percent of individuals aged 20 to 39 from the general population suffer from depression. 24.2 percent of Law School survey respondents reported suffering from anxiety, and 20.5 percent said they were at heightened risk of suicide. 66 percent of respondents said that they experienced new mental health challenges during law school. Nearly 61.8 percent said they had frequent or intense imposter syndrome experiences at school and in measuring social connectedness, 8.2 percent stated they had zero people they could open up to about their most private feelings without having to hold back.
But the problem is not confined to the Law School. In 2014, researchers Jerome Organ, David Jaffe, and Katherine Bender built on the work of Lawrence Krieger, Ken Sheldon and more, to revitalize the discussion of law student mental health. They surveyed students from 15 ABA-approved law schools and found high incidence of drug use, depression, anxiety, and suicide risk. Additionally, Law students at Yale and Georgetown surveyed their peers, and students at other schools have also demanded action. Evidence of pervasive suffering calls for decisive action now.
We therefore call on all law schools to survey their own student bodies every year and release the survey data. The court of public opinion should hold them accountable.
Studies that anonymize school participants allow schools to shirk individual responsibility. Only institution-specific surveys done year to year can measure whether policy changes at each school were effective. Harvard Law School is the only law school that has taken the first step towards change with an in-depth, initial survey and other schools should do at least the same.
Because an annual barometer of student wellbeing is only useful if coupled with new policies, we also advocate for Harvard to take these next steps: ...
In the face of this mental health crisis, law schools must reverse the trend of increased mental health challenges. By committing to our asks, Harvard should engage in this cooperative effort to investigate root causes of mental health challenges, test new interventions, and begin to inaugurate practicing lawyers that finally say to future law students, “definitely go to law school.” Or at least, “maybe go.”
