{"id":9631,"date":"2024-01-14T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-14T06:00:16","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"My-Turn-Cambridge-to-Gaza-Yearning-to-be-Free-53670714\/","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/?p=9631","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Cambridge to Gaza: Yearning to be Free"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, testifies before the House Education and Workforce Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on Dec. 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. The Committee held a hearing to investigate antisemitism on college campuses. (Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images\/TNS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

\n Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com. <\/em> <\/p>\n

I have to admit I struggled with this column for days; conflicting thoughts percolated for days, some ideas discarded, others added. Much of it had to do with personal attitudes toward white privilege, racism, and expectations; other parts on attitudes toward settler-colonialism and the war of ethnic cleansing and genocide raging in Palestine. Still, other thoughts formed over a dinner I had with old friends who listened with love and attention as I vented my frustrations with conventional establishment perspectives.<\/p>\n

And the more I vented the more I realized how intersectional both conflicts were.<\/p>\n

First, my thoughts on plagiarism: <\/p>\n

There are two forms of plagiarism. While neither is acceptable, the first, and most pernicious, is the stealing of another person\u2019s original concepts and opinions, appropriating their creations and presenting them as one\u2019s own. While that does not appear to be Dr. Claudine Gay\u2019s sin, even venial sins have consequences.<\/p>\n

Indeed, sometimes, as in Dr. Gay\u2019s case, venial sins morph into mortal wounds \u2014 especially if not immediately confronted \u2014 and become perceived as unforgivable.<\/p>\n

Gay was sloppy beyond belief: as a Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton, Stanford, and Harvard-educated scholar she should have known better, and I believe she deserves whatever intellectual disapprobation comes her way. Dr Gay, whether she ever considered becoming a university president or not, should have known that her work as a progressive Black scholar would always be scrutinized more critically than interest rate projections from the Federal Reserve. Gay was too casual and careless with her work and, I believe, although she remains on Harvard\u2019s faculty her resume will forever be stamped with a scarlet P.<\/p>\n

But, on this particular January morning, I\u2019ve come to believe that the public lynching isn\u2019t about whether she was qualified to be president of Harvard, or a diversity hire, or not, isn\u2019t about plagiarism, isn\u2019t about footnotes and quotation marks; it\u2019s about race, about the persistence of race in America and America\u2019s refusal to confront the evil and malevolent presence that has been poisoning this land for over 400 years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about whether Harvard put Dr. Gay out on a \u201cglass\u201d cliff or not.<\/p>\n

Dr. Claudine Gay was lynched because competing, conservative interests \u2014 including some members of her own community \u2014 oppose Critical Race Theory, oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion, and who together acted not to protect Harvard, Israel, or academic freedom but their own nationalist, economic, corporate and institutional interests.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why three university presidents, all highly-accomplished women, were publicly pilloried for allegedly failing to fully embrace Elise Stefanik\u2019s false definition of genocide, a definition falsely conflating the Arabic word Intifada<\/em> with genocide.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Bernie Steinberg, executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010, wrote in the Harvard Crimson<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a leader in the Jewish community,\u201d he wrote, \u201cI am particularly alarmed by today\u2019s McCarthyist tactic of manufacturing an antisemitism scare, which, in effect, turns the very real issue of Jewish safety into a pawn in a cynical political game to cover for Israel\u2019s deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine…\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes this trend particularly disturbing,\u201d Steinberg continued, \u201cis the power differential: Billionaire donors and the politically-connected, non-Jews and Jews alike on one side, targeting disproportionately people of vulnerable populations on the other, including students, untenured faculty, persons of color, Muslims, and, especially, Palestinian activists.\u201d <\/p>\n

While the targeted presidents, within the context of Western colonization and liberation were correct to take the stand they did, the deniers of liberation and freedom demonstrated that they will go to unprecedented lengths to protect their privileges and power, especially at the expense of people of color, whether Black academics in America or poets in Palestine.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Liz Magill \u2014 who had already been under attack for allowing UPenn to host the Palestine Writes Literature Festival<\/a> in September, the \u201conly North American literature festival dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists\u201d \u2014 to resign and the stage was set for the high-value lynching of Harvard\u2019s Claudine Gay.<\/p>\n

That Harvard, with it\u2019s $50 billion endowment and a highly-competent stable of accomplished advocates, intellectuals, could not defend itself or its president against a campaign of lies, misinformation, and intimidation speaks, I believe, more to the fact that they could not recognize the nature of threat confronting it.<\/p>\n

A threat that intends to delegitimize and disenfranchise people unlike themselves; a threat that espouses book banning, demonizing LGBTQIA+ peoples, limiting American history to white history, marginalizing minority communities and people of color, denying bodily autonomy and reproductive rights to women; a threat that expresses solidarity with authoritarian and repressive regimes internationally.<\/p>\n

Simply expressed, the attack on three university presidents is an attack on the diversity of America, on the promise that all people are created equal.<\/p>\n

Gay was lynched not because she was an antisemite or a plagiarist, but because her academic success and high-profile progressive interests challenged established mythologies of white nationalists and settler colonialist interests.<\/p>\n

From Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali to Palestinian support for resistance in Ferguson, Mo. intersectional conversations are not new to anyone who knows Black history. Black Americans have often perceived the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a prism of resistance and liberation, preferring Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire to Henry Kissinger, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

The war is not over. In their attempts to overturn affirmative action, overturn diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and until America returns, in their fevered imagination, to a nation where white dominant ideology is triumphant.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s snowing outside. As it falls I\u2019m reminded of one of my daughter\u2019s favorite books, Jan Brett\u2019s \u201cAnnie and the Wild Animals.\u201d Its first two lines, which we often quote, usually metaphorically, are \u201cIt had been snowing for days. Winter was lasting too long.\u201d <\/p>\n

Perhaps, I wonder, as I consider whether to go outside and start cleaning the snow off my car, is if we should consider whether the truth of Harvard is if their most pressing problem today is whether they can find enough qualified teachers to meet student demand for a course on Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n

Recently, on X, a message inquired \u201cAre you a Taylor Swift \u2018Lover\u2019? Harvard University is seeking teaching assistants for a new course in the spring that is all about the superstar singer-songwriter and her global impact.\u201d <\/p>\n

300 students signed up for the course: Winter, indeed, is lasting far too long.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com. I have to admit I struggled with this column for days; conflicting thoughts percolated for days, some ideas discarded, others added….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":524,"featured_media":9632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","_newspack_byline_active":false,"_newspack_byline":"","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,508],"tags":[24,263,505],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[575],"class_list":["post-9631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-top-headlines-cm","tag-facebook","tag-opinion","tag-paywall","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/42691033-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9633,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9631\/revisions\/9633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9631"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnewspack_spnsrs_tax&post=9631"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=9631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}