Who Is Most Scared on Harvard’s Campus? Don’t Ask the New York Times.

A sign posted outside the Harvard University campus in Cambridge Mass on April Photo Mel Musto Bloomberg via Getty Images When it comes to how it treats different groups on campus Harvard wants the world to know that it is balanced It cares about all groups equally So naturally on Tuesday when it issued a lengthy record about antisemitism at Harvard the university also issued a lengthy review on Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias at Harvard The reports reveal a profound imbalance at Harvard One group overwhelmingly feels unwelcome and unsafe You d never know which group that is however from reading the New York Times Before I say anything else and there is much to say it s pivotal to note that how the New York Times reports this news will loom large in the society imagination and has the foreseen to do much damage Consider these two paragraphs which get buried two-thirds of the way into the New York Times piece on the two Harvard reports The two task forces worked together to create a campuswide survey that received nearly responses from faculty staff and students It unveiled that percent of Christian respondents communicated feeling physically unsafe on campus while percent of Jewish respondents and percent of Muslim respondents revealed the same The university does not track the total population of these groups on campus In addition to the percent of Muslim respondents who worried about expressing their views percent of Christian respondents and percent of Jewish respondents explained they felt the same way Got that For all the articles insists reports think pieces op-eds statements and speeches from elected politicians and other worthies about rampant antisemitism on campus these two massive reports discover that the one group on campus whether we are talking about faculty students or staff that majority consistently feels nervous about expressing its views and bulk consistently feels physically unsafe on campus are Muslims We are often questioned to take the feelings and perceptions of Jewish students faculty and staff as proxies for the objective safety and shield and sense of welcome that Jewish people do or do not feel on campuses across the country Yet according to their self-reported experiences in the new Harvard studies Jewish students faculty and staff at Harvard consistently feel more welcome safer and freer to be Jews including being Zionist Jews than do Muslims at Harvard One-sided Ism With that in mind let s look at how the Times led off its piece A Harvard task force published a scathing account of the university on Tuesday finding that antisemitism had infiltrated coursework social life the hiring of certain faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs A separate review on anti-Arab anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias on campus also disclosed on Tuesday unveiled widespread discomfort and alienation among those students as well with percent of Muslim survey respondents saying they supposed they would face an academic or professional penalty for expressing their political opinions Notice a scarce things The Times leads with the review on antisemitism giving second billing to the assessment on anti-Arab anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiment Given the statistics the Times itself reports deep into the piece it seems like an odd choice of order Also notice the terminology On the one hand we have antisemitism Antisemitism is an ism in the family of racism so it instantly calls to mind the worst social evil There s nothing comparable when it comes to the triptych of anti-Arab anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias According to the syntax of the paragraphs the ism of antisemitism is the actor and the agent It can do grave harm infiltrating and influencing the entire campus It is an objective thing what mile Durkheim called a social fact When it comes to anti-Arab anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias the objective reality of the thing of racism dissolves into the feelings of students It becomes a subjective perception or opinion of the alleged casualties who may or may not be casualties at all Along the same lines antisemitism conjoins a range of issues including the multiple shades of criticism of Israel into a single form hatred of the Jews On the other side there s no such unity of terms Instead we get an uncertain and floating array of different biases against a religion against an ethnicity against a group that numerous of Israel s supporters don t even acknowledge are a people much less a nation Read our complete coverage Chilling Dissent Scary Words for One Side I bring this issue up not to contest the reality of antisemitism that would be absurd Nor am I making the by now familiar though increasingly obscured point that people conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism a central feature of the battles unfolding on campuses In six months to a year I suspect almost everyone who is not a hardcore advocate of the Palestinian cause will no longer even notice the conflation and just assume that anti-Zionism is antisemitism Instead I want to point out that when it comes to the Jews society has a unifying term for a variety of distinct phenomena ranging from criticism of the policies of a state criticism of the way that state has organized and defined itself to animus against a religion an ethnicity a people and so on Yet we have no such term for what may be as unified an animus as antisemitism is supposed to be even if that animus is directed at different groups Palestinians Arabs and Muslims and expressed in different techniques Orientalism might be a good candidate but after more than years it remains an academic term of art The absence of such a term without delay gives the advantage in the conversation and the debate over Israel to one side Related Leaked NYT Gaza Memo Tells Journalists to Avoid Words Genocide Ethnic Cleansing and Occupied Territory In the opening paragraph on the review on antisemitism the Times uses words like scathing infiltrated social life and worldview to describe the state of the Jews on campus Not only are the words alarming and scary but they indict all levels of the institution from its hiring practices to its curricular decisions to the everyday life of students faculty and staff When it comes to the analysis on Islamophobia and anti-Arabism the issue is reduced to the discomfort and alienation of students only That is drastically at odds with the fallout from campus debates for pro-Palestine scholarship and scholars Entire Middle East studies departments are under review for purported pro-Palestine views law review articles are being suppressed staffers are being let go after airing pro-Palestine views distinguished professors are being pushed out and retiring in the face of attacks Again I want to remind us of this critical fact buried in the mess of words that is this piece The one group on campus whether among the faculty students or staff that largest part consistently feels nervous about expressing its views and majority of consistently feels physically unsafe on campus are Muslims Not Jews One would think that should give our larger conversation about antisemitism on campus specific pause Judging by this article it won t Readers and writers and politicians and editors and campus leaders and cultural elites will just fly by the fact of the matter The post Who Is Majority of Scared on Harvard s Campus Don t Ask the New York Times appeared first on The Intercept