![]() Then right before Thanksgiving, we took up the long and terrible history of the blood libel, or the conspiracy theory – entirely false – that Jews abduct and ritually murder Christian children. Its origins seem to lie in the twelfth century, but extend throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Most recently, as writer Talia Lavin documented for The New Republic, the blood libel has now manifested within the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon claiming a secret cabal of elites (they mean Jews, mostly) are extracting adrenochrome (an anti-blood clotting chemical don’t ask conspiracy theories to make sense) from tortured children in order to attain immortality. ![]() Opinion: Why student protests against Israel are so painful, polarizing and complicated Pro-Palestinian students take part in a protest in support of the Palestinians amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza, at Columbia University in New York City, U.S., October 12, 2023. ![]() The political implications weren’t subtle, and again we leaned into them as best as I could guide us. We started with a massacre in 1099 CE, as the European armies breached the walls of Jerusalem and slaughtered inhabitants taking shelter in Muslim holy places, but we ended in a nuanced place, reading sources and scholarship that showed both conflict and co-existence, talking about the ways that people have choices about how they react, what they do, how they understand the world. It was, on that day, filled with hard talk, confusing talk, because history – all history, but especially this history – is complicated and doesn’t support simple ideological positions.Ī few weeks later, we got to the history of the Crusades. They already knew that I am Jewish and I have never hid my politics – it’s hard to hide politics from students when you write political op-eds – but instead always labor when I teach to build a community where we can talk about the hard stuff and often disagree while remaining a community. I told them I would admit ignorance too, since I’m a medievalist, not an expert in the 20 th century, let alone the 21 st. So I let the Vikings wait and instead sat down on the desk at the front of the class and I told them I hoped that as a historian, this would be a good place to process what was happening in Israel and Gaza, a community where they could safely admit ignorance and ask questions, especially about the history. ![]() I’m teaching a first-year seminar on how historical narratives get made, reading everything from the densest scholarship to the silliest fiction, and focusing on the European Middle Ages.īut after the terrorist attacks on 10/7, I knew my students would need to talk. On October 9, according to my syllabus, my plan was to talk about the history of the Vikings. Harvard, Penn and MIT presidents under fire over ‘despicable’ testimony on antisemitism and genocide No one should be calling for genocide and I want my university leaders to be clear about that, even if their bad-faith questioner asks them about “policy.” But while the show in Congress might be good politics, it doesn’t reflect what I’m hearing on my own campus in the place that matters most to me: the classroom.īill Ackman, chief executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management LP, speaks during an interview for an episode of "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations" in New York, US, on Tuesday, Nov. Columnist Kevin Drum argued this was a deliberate choice intending to trap the presidents, because in fact hateful speech not specifically directed at individuals is often protected. Stefanik was careful, asking about whether calling for genocide of Jews, generically, was harassment and violated campus policies. The hearing has fed a public outcry, doing exactly the thing that I feared – making it harder to meet the moment through, among other things, education. The Republicans on the committee, led by Elise Stefanik (Republican, New York), insisted on simplistic responses and instead received nuance and caution, though all three presidents made it clear that there were lines that can’t be crossed without consequences. During the war in Gaza, it’s gotten harder than ever.Įarlier this week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce called in the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn to grill them about campus antisemitism. In a world driven by sound bites, social media, secret recordings of professors and students and even elected officials demanding yes/no answers, suspicion and division are building, rendering it seemingly impossible to have the difficult conversations in the classroom that always, in my experience, lie at the core of any great education.
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