Harvard’s Anti-Semitism Degree
At the distinguished Kennedy School antisemitic bias not only flourishes but can now be taught.
As earthquakes go, this one contradicted T.S. Eliot (who earned two Harvard degrees in better days) by ending in a bang, not a whimper. A shockwave was felt across the screens of the global intelligentsia, aka humanitarian activists:
“The United States left the U.N. Human Rights Council on June 20, 2018, describing it as a “cesspool of political bias.”
The U.S. representative to the U.N., Nikki Haley commented, “I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from human rights commitments. On the contrary, we take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical organization that makes a mockery of human rights.”
That was unacceptable in the narrow-minded U.N. diplomatic community where Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the first Muslim and Jordanian Arab in the position of High Commissioner for Human Rights, holds court. It was not a surprise. Those who while away the hours (and UN funds) at swish confabs are incapable of imagining that someone disagrees with them.
As Eliot would have said, “In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” But not for the High Commish. There was no introspection, doubt, or appeal for a second chance to change its erroneous ways. Instead, he sniffed the U.S. withdrawal was “disappointing.”
The Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council was established in 2006 and has repeatedly drawn heavy criticism for members with dubious human rights backgrounds. Ken Roth, a former UNHRW chief, was an outspoken and unrelenting critic of Israel and ran the council until his resignation to teach at Harvard in 2022. It is to him that we look to for the source of the problems.
Under his direction, various countries were were charged with war crimes. The list includes mostly serial violators of largely rogue states run by totalitarian regimes. He cited Israel 65 times, accounting for one-third of all global violations, compared to a scant handful of violations for Hamas (1), Hezbollah (1), Uganda (1), Russia (6), the Taliban (6), Syria (10), and no mentions of North Korea.
The HRW bias against the State of Israel was not without precedent. Following a 2006 HRW report on the 2006 Lebanon war (credit to Wikipedia for Roth investigative reporting that follows), Roth criticized Israel’s response to Hezbollah rocket attacks by quoting the Old Testament, saying that:
“an eye for an eye — or, more precisely in this case, twenty eyes for an eye — may have been the morality of some more primitive moment.”
The “classic anti-Semitic caricature against Jews” was an incitement to hatred of Jews, according to the Anti-Defamation League: “To suggest that Judaism is a primitive faith incompatible with current morality is to participate in the de-legitimization of Judaism, the basis of much antisemitism,” read the editorial in The New York Sun that followed.
Professor of law Alan Dershowitz at Harvard University responded to Roth, “When it comes to Israel and its enemies, Human Rights Watch cooks the books about facts, cheats on interviews, and puts out predetermined conclusions that are driven more by their ideology than by evidence.”
Not one to back down, Roth’s Twitter feed contains juicier reveals. In 2014 he tweeted:
“Germans demonstrate against the anti-Semitism that has erupted throughout Europe as a result of Israel’s actions during the Gaza War. Merkel aces it.”
Jew-Hatred
Roth was condemned by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic for “blaming the Jewish state for the murderous deeds of anti-Semites” and for disregarding the unbreakable principle that “the objects of prejudice are not the cause of hate.”
According to Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, Roth “appears increasingly determined to subjugate the institution he leads to a far more constrained and subjective political agenda.” Roth was asked to resign.
Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, attacked Roth in April 2015 for his tweets attacking Israel, which provided relief to Nepal in the wake of the April 2015 earthquake. Tweets from Roth said: “It is simpler to deal with a humanitarian crisis far away than the one Israel has caused in Gaza, which is close at hand.”
Roth has long been known for his hate of Israel and his use of antisemitic rhetoric to criticize it, according to a 2020 Algemeiner Journal article.
In 2021, Roth countered with a tweet that the blame for antisemitism was on Israel:
“…the rise in antisemitic occurrences during the most recent Gaza conflict exposes those who claim that the actions of the Israeli government have no bearing on antisemitism.”
Roth removed his message not because it was biased but because in the old meme, he was misunderstood:
“I withdrew an earlier tweet because many misconstrued its wording.”
Unfellowship
In 2021, Ken Roth received a fellowship offer from the Harvard Kennedy School. According to the WSJ, by late July, the Kennedy School’s dean, Doug Elmendorf, rejected Mr. Roth’s nomination before being pressured to reverse his decision after “protests from students, faculty, the editorial board of the Boston Globe and the Nation magazine.”
Mr. Roth claims that he had been “canceled” and that “academic freedom” was at stake. The Journal points out that “this is an inversion of the truth. Mr. Roth’s plaint of victimhood should’ve fallen on deaf ears: Only weeks after he heard that the Harvard fellowship wouldn’t be confirmed, Mr. Roth accepted a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.”
According to Roth, the withdrawal occurred due to his criticism of Israel. Roth expressed his opinion that Harvard Kennedy School dean Douglas Elmendorf had caved to the university’s pro-Israel patrons. Professor Kathryn Sikkink of the Kennedy School reported that she was informed that Elmendorf believed that Human Rights Watch has an “anti-Israel bias” and that Roth’s tweets on Israel were troubling.
The ACLU, Pen America, and other human rights advocates denounced the Kennedy School’s choice in response to Roth’s complaint. HRW expressed its concern about a “lasting impact on scholars and activists, particularly Palestinians, if they write or speak critically about the Israeli government” in a letter to Harvard President Lawrence Bacow published on January 10, 2023. Following those reports, hundreds of Harvard supporters called Elmendorf to step down.
It was left unmentioned that human rights violations against Iranian women, Taliban girls, and countless other atrocities were considered minor league compared to the allegations Roth waged against the lone democracy where women thrive in the Middle East.
The Kennedy School, which initially rejected Roth’s allegations, changed its mind, thereby denying the U of Pennsylvania the chance to offer the antisemitic point of view. Roth was then reoffered the fellowship on January 19, 2023, which he graciously accepted. Roth then attacked Elmendorf, accusing him of concealing those responsible for the veto decision. Hate knows no bounds, not when Israel is involved:
“The problem of people being penalized for criticizing Israel is not exclusive to me.”
Roth is right. We can think of a few others throughout history who condemned Israel.
One credential the former UN Human Rights Watch director cannot be accused of concealing is his fund-raising ability. Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber, a Saudi millionaire, once gave HRW a gift of $487,000 during Ken Roth’s tenure with the proviso that it would not be used to fund issues concerning gay people. Roth accepted the donation and dutifully complied with the terms. Separately, the donor had been the target of HRW investigation for coercive business practices up through 2012.
Curious, no?
Coda
In a Kafkaesque gesture, President Joe Biden reversed the withdrawal decision, and once again the United States re-joined the U. N. Human Rights Council in 2021.
Sources
Wikipedia Ken Roth
