ANTISEMITISM – Gadi Luzzatto Voghera: Harvard dean victim of political correctness that does not defend Jews

Accused of plagiarism, criticized for her handling of incidents of anti-Semitism on her campus, Claudine Gay recently announced her resignation from her post as dean of Harvard. The first black woman to lead the Ivy League institution, Gay fell “victim to a widespread phenomenon in American universities and in the American cultural world: political correctness taken to its extreme consequences,” Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, director of the Milan-based Foundation Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation – CDEC, explained to Pagine Ebraiche. According to the historian, who was a professor at Boston University’s program in Padua, a “concerning spirit of censorship” has spread overseas. In academia, both in public and private schools, history teachers can no longer speak freely about historical facts such as slavery, without risking being accused of using inappropriate language against certain minorities and without risking being swept up in the so-called cancel culture.”
In this climate, the former Harvard dean had to answer the question of whether invoking the Jewish genocide violates the university’s codes of conduct. “She replied, ‘it depends on the context.’ An incomprehensible caution, if not considering the fear of getting canceled,” said Luzzatto Voghera. The problem in the United States, he added, is “cultural, it’s huge and it’s starting to touch us too. We are facing a cancel culture that is pushing toward a communitarian world in which all ethnic and religious communities are progressively closing in on themselves. In doing so, they adopt their own language that other communities, however, do not recognize. As a result, we find ourselves in a society in which among Blacks certain things can be said, among whites others, among Jews still others, and so on. A phenomenon that goes against all forms of dialogue, of educational activity, and which also prevents the recognition of each other’s diversity.”
Moreover, in this communitarian world, highlighted the director of CDEC, Jews “are no longer recognized as a minority discriminated against for centuries, but are associated with the image of white oppressors.” An inverted picture in which the Jewish world thus becomes the target of a self-absolving antisemitism, as previously happened on several U.S. campuses.
“Everything is simplified and the problem also touches our universities. Today, for example, the general idea is that one is either a pro- Palestinian or a fascist. It is a totalitarian view of reality, used explicitly in the world of Italian culture and academia. And the same people who invoke it, at the same time justify themselves, saying: ‘We are the ones defending freedom of expression against the lobbies that impose a standardized narrative on us.’ It’s a slippery slope, and Ms. Gay has gone thunderously down it.”
As far as pro-Palestinian movements and attacks on Israel are concerned, the CDEC director does not see a difference from the past. “If you go and read what was being written in 2014, 2006 or 1982, you will find a rhetorical pattern. Those who join the Palestinian cause do not do so with an interest in solving the problem, they just need a reason for aggregation. The Palestinians are cyclically chosen as such, but so were the Iranian women who, I don’t know why, no one talks about anymore.”

Translated by Claudia Editori and revised by Annadora Zuanel, students from the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, trainees in the newsroom of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.