Antisemitism Continues to Rise

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Anti Semitino is exploding in the How can that be
in the era of diversity, equity and inclusion? Can it
be the DEI is actually feeding anti semitism. Six one
seven two sixty eight sixty eight is the number here,
six one seven two sixty six sixty eight sixty eight.

(00:21):
The text number is seven zero four seven zero. I'm
Sandy shack In for Jeff Cooner. This is the Kooner Report.
We are supposed to be living in an age of diversity,
equity and inclusion. At least that's what the Left tells us,
and they will defend that ideology with huh, bricks, guns,

(00:44):
frozen water bottles, spit So why is it that during
the Biden years the administration of Enlightenment anti Semitism skyrocketed?

Speaker 2 (00:58):
You know?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Why are Jews being singled out by the oh so
tolerant and empathetic left just to demonstrate you know what
I am talking about. I have some stats for you
that I looked up and I was I was bowled
over by Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, anti

(01:21):
Semitic incidents rose thirty four percent at the time, at
all time high record. Between twenty twenty one and twenty
twenty two, it went up thirty six percent, another record high,
and that's according to Reuters. Between twenty twenty two and
twenty twenty three. Are you ready for this one hundred

(01:43):
and forty percent rise in anti Semitic incidents. That's the
highest number of vincients ever recorded in a single year
period since the ADL began tracking these things back in
nineteen seventy nine. Now, most of these occurred between October
seventh and December thirty first, which is, of course, right

(02:04):
after that horrible, horrible massacre that occurred in Israel with
Hamas attacking. It's October seventh to January seventh, twenty twenty
three to twenty twenty four, it went up three hundred
and sixty one percent compared to the same period the
year before, and twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four

(02:27):
two hundred percent. This is crazy, what is going on?
You would have thought that after those heinous, monstrous attacks
on October seventh, when almost twelve hundred people were murdered
and two hundred and fifty one hostages were taken, some
still in captivity. Many of those hostages eventually murdered too,

(02:51):
after they were taken, yet it looks like anti Semitism
has gone up, not down.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
How can that be?

Speaker 1 (03:02):
How is that possible? You know, military conflicts between Israel
and Hamas have historically correlated with spikes and anti Semitic incidences,
But is that enough to explain the normalization of anti
Semitic rhetoric that is happening in this country now. President Biden,

(03:27):
when he was in office, acknowledged the rise and said,
knock it off. We will not tolerate that in my administration.
I have the cut of it. Just remind everybody what
he said, cut number thirty one. Please, Mike, just.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Be clear about this as well. There should be no
place on any campus, no place in America for anti
Semitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is
no place for hate speech or violence of any kind,
whether it's antimatism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or
Palestinian Americans. It's simply wrong. There's no place for racism

(04:08):
in America. It's all wrong.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
It's not American, it's un American, and it's all wrong.
According to President Biden. That was May seventh of twenty
twenty four. Did the incidents of anti Semitism go down.
After he said something, no, they rocketed up. The White

(04:32):
House had initially tried to avoid the Biden White House
had initially tried to avoid significant involvement in anti Semitism
because his advisors, the political advisors to the White House
at the time, believed that it was a political tinderbox.
And but the problem is that, you know, protests escalated

(04:52):
on campuses. So the President decided he needed to offer
a specific condemnation of violence and the property destruction that
was happening not just on campuses but across the country.
And Jewish Democrats initially praised him and after he gave
that speech for taking a clear position against anti Semitism,

(05:15):
but that praise started to peter out and dissipate, basically
because they didn't really do anything to back up the words.
Campus unrest was looked at as a very tricky proposition
by the White House, and President Biden faced unrelenting criticism

(05:37):
from young voters and other blocks of the Democratic Party
for his handling of the Israeli Hamas conflict, and that
made him shy away from actually physically taking action against anything.

(05:57):
His stand against anti Semitism appears to have been all
noise and no action. He actually didn't back it up
with anything. Why would that be? Why would that administration?
The publicly held diversity inclusion intolerance to be the highest

(06:19):
in disha of moral superiority, so much so that competence
took a second place to DEI in hiring practices for
both the administration and those who supported the administration, and
intolerance flourished in this environment, even with the appalling historical

(06:41):
examples of what can happen when you let that intolerance breathe,
such as the Holocaust, you know, which demonstrates what happens
when you allow hatred to run rampant in both the
streets and on the college campuses. To show how important
DEI was to Press and Biden, on his very first

(07:02):
day in office, he signed an executive order which promised
to allocate significant resources to diversity, equity inclusion. DEI and
those who supported the president and his policies claimed that
there was nothing less than a revolution to finally eradicate
racism and intolerance the pervaded American society. That's what they said,

(07:25):
with their banners holding it high above their head. Critics
of this process said, well, wait a minute, there's room
for improvement, you know, but America is light years away
from what it was in the fifties and sixties, and
that allocating significant resources to fight a problem that's not

(07:47):
really noticeable anymore is going to cause a lot of
problems social upheaval. But overnight, a significant part of American institution,
we're talking about giant corporations, universities, and even the federal
government itself aligned with the Biden administration and began to

(08:09):
divert significant budgets encouraged by the administration to DEI departments.
I'll give you an example. The University of Pennsylvania announced
in twenty twenty an initiative called Projects for Progress, which
was designed to invest huge amounts of resources into everything

(08:29):
related to fighting discrimination, real or imagined or more accurately
or more accurately almost all types of discrimination. And the
interesting thing is, after DEI took hold at penn Anti,
Semitic fervor on campus intensified. And that's according to doctor

(08:51):
Stanley Goldfarb, he's a former vice device dean of the
university's medical school, and he wrote an article for the
City Journal and he said, this is no coincidence. He
said at the heart of DEI is a simple binary.
The world is divided between oppressors and the oppressed. Supporters

(09:13):
of DEI cast white people as oppressors and black people
as the oppressed. While they apply this frame primarily to America,
they also apply it to Israel too, And apparently Israel
is a bastion of Jewish whiteness with a racist commitment
to shattering the lives of non white Palestinians. That's according

(09:33):
to doctor Goldfarb in his article.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
So.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
DEI made people classify other people by their skin color,
and then they turned whites out to be the villains.
And therefore is Israelites Israelis Jewish people from Israel are
in that group. They are part of that white constituency,

(10:03):
and therefore Israeli Jews are also villains. And if Israeli
Jews are villains, then all Jews are villains. Can it
be that that simple? There's In twenty twenty one, a
fellow at the Heritage Foundation by the name of Jay
Green examined the social media accounts of seven hundred and

(10:25):
fifty people holding key positions in DEI departments at sixty
five American universities and found not only then almost all
of them frequently shared content about Israel, despite the fact
that the Jewish state is not supposed to play a
significant role in the lives of those whose job definitions
is to ensure equality on campuses thousands of miles away

(10:47):
from the Gaza Strip, but also that ninety six percent
of the content they shared was not only extremely critical,
but bordered on anti Semitism. This supposition is supported by
a black, non Jewish woman in twenty twenty one who
was hired to lead DEI efforts at a particular college,
Danza College near San Jose in northern California. Anti Semitism

(11:10):
has exploded in the US, and what I find shocking
is the fact that it's done that given the fact
that we live according to the progressive left and an
age of DEI Enlightenment. So I made up my business
to try and find out what's going on. Why is
this happening? And it appears to me that the very

(11:32):
social program, basically DEI, that was supposed to eradicate racism
is boosting it. And in support of this supposition, before
the break, I started to tell you about Tabby Lee,
who is a black, non Jewish woman who in twenty
twenty one, was hired to lead the DEI efforts of

(11:53):
DeAnza College near San Jose that's in northern California. She
wrote for The New York after she was fired in
twenty twenty three. Lee said that she was horrified when
she arrived at the college to experience an atmosphere of
anti Semitic incitement and agitation. And once she told her

(12:16):
colleagues that Jewish students deserve treatment exactly like any other
minority group, the response that she got was that was
not true because Jews are Zionists. Zionism is racism and
white supremacy, and therefore care should be taken if Jewish
events are allowed to take place at the college at all,

(12:38):
and that these events focus on Israeli injustices against Palestinians.
If you're going to do an event, so you can't
do it the other way.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
Event.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
She was shocked, She was shocked, in appalled, and she
demanded that the college officially condemn anti semitism.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
And guess what they did.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
They refused, And then you know, students and colleagues in
the DEI department started calling her derogatory names like filthy Zionist.
So these are the members of the DEI, the Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion Department themselves are calling their leader a

(13:22):
filthy Zionist because she was standing up for Jewish students
and she lost her job, and she lost her job
because of it. You couldn't make this up. If you
wrote this for a script somewhere, they would say, it's no,
it's too far fast, you can't do it. I am

(13:44):
completely floored by that. And this coincides, by the way,
with the election of Joe Biden twenty twenty. That's what happened,
you know. It's universities started to before Biden's elections, systemic
antisemitism on campuses was rare, very rarely happened. After he

(14:08):
came to the White House, universities began establishing these DEI
departments because, as I said before, this is the first
thing he did on his very first day. He signed
this into He signed this into into being. He wanted
DII departments, and if you wanted to curry favor with
the administration and if you wanted to get those federal
box you had to go along. And so universities began
establishing DEI departments at a dizzying pace, and they staffed

(14:32):
them with faculty members who saw hatred of Israel not
only as legitimate stand but also as a moral duty
of anyone who considers themselves a good, progressive, an enlightened person.
You have to hate Israel in this way or they

(14:55):
establish anti Semitism as a policy within the DEI departments.
And I think that's why so few universities lifted a
finger after October seventh, when students raised Hamas and Hezbola flags,
set up tents in the heart of campuses, and attacked

(15:18):
Jewish students who were their friends before the DEI departments.
I mean, it's just it's amazing. Between October seventh, this
is according to the ADEL, between October seventh and September
twenty fourth, twenty twenty four, at least twelve hundred out

(15:38):
of three thousand anti Semitic incidents happened on college campuses.
That's a huge, huge number, and the university presidents turned
a blind eye to what was going on. Like at Harvard.
You remember President Claudine Gay. It's very if you haven't

(16:01):
heard the cuts from the Congressional hearing on the anti
Semitism on campuses, it's astonishing, and she was eventually forced
to resign, But just to remind you what was going on,
here's a cut of her being questioned by New York
Congresswoman Elist Stephonic, cut thirty three, Please, Mike.

Speaker 6 (16:22):
And doctor Gay at Harvard, does calling for the genocide
of Jews? Violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment?

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yes?

Speaker 6 (16:30):
Or no?

Speaker 2 (16:31):
It can be depending on the context.

Speaker 6 (16:34):
What's the context?

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Targeted as an individual, targeted at an individual.

Speaker 6 (16:39):
It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand
your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization
is part of antisemitism?

Speaker 1 (16:52):
I don't think she did, and Stephanic went on cut
thirty three a please.

Speaker 6 (16:58):
Does calling for the side of Jews violate Harvard's rules
of bullying and harassment?

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yes?

Speaker 7 (17:05):
Or no?

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Anti Semitic rhetoric?

Speaker 6 (17:08):
And is it anti semitic rhetoric?

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Anti Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts
to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we
do take action.

Speaker 6 (17:21):
So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide
of Jews violates Harvard Code of Conduct. Correct.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Again, it depends on the context.

Speaker 6 (17:33):
It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes,
and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable
answers across the board.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
And she did resign. And she's not the only university
president who lost her job. The presidents of University of
Pennsylvania Columbia also lost their jobs because they turned a
blind eye to anti Semitism because it didn't fit with
the DEI mantra that was going going on that they
needed to have in order to get federal support. And

(18:05):
it's not just the university presidents and the campuses that
turned a blight eye to anti Semitism. You know, many
Democrats did too, and there are there are so many
examples of how in their rush to support DEI they
chose to make chews the enemy and among others.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
But I find.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
It amazing the hypocrisy of DEI that in a program
that houts and flies a banner that says we teach diversity,
we teach equity, we teach inclusion, we teach tolerance, that
the very fundamental, the very fundamental tenets of these social

(18:54):
programs are to tear down other people six seven to six,
six sixty eight sixty. This is Sandy shack In for
Jeff Kooner here on the Kooner Report, we're talking about
the exponential growth of anti Semitism in this country and
it's connection with the establishment of Dei departments and policies.

(19:15):
Again the number six one seven two six six sixty
eight sixty eighth. The text number is seven zero four
seven zero, and on the text line five oh eight
says fragile snowflakes confuse criticism of Israel with anti Semitism.
They do. They think that you can you can criticize
the policy of the political policy of Israel and not

(19:38):
make it personal and go after Jews. It's the same way,
you know, if you wanted to criticize basically the policies
of the Biden administration that you know, that didn't mean
you hate all all Americans and you didn't like what
the government was doing. But they do confuse it. They

(19:59):
think if you criticize, you, if it's okay to criticize Israel,
they extend it, you can criticize all Jews and make
Jews responsible for everything, which is you know, gobsmacking to me.
Let's see another one from a five oh eight when
the condemned anti Semitism resolution came before the US House.

(20:21):
Pelosi had a change to condemn hate. Yes, she did,
and she is not the only Democrat that was trying
to turn a blind eye to anti Semitism. Right after
the horrible attack on October seventh, I think it was
like two or three weeks later, Republican lawmakers on the

(20:42):
House Education and Workforce Committee published a three hundred and
twenty five page report on the state of anti Semitism
in universities. And the report summarized a year of interviews
with hundreds of people, as well as a thorough examination
of like four hundred thousand pages of internal documents at

(21:04):
various institutions you know, such as as you know, Harvard
in Columbia and Pennsylvania. And one of the most incriminating
findings published in the report was a transcript of a
conversation between Minoush Schaffique, a former president of Columbia University,
and David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, the co chairs of

(21:25):
the university's board of trustees. Schaffique told Greenwald and Shipman
about a conversation that she had with then Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer, the senior senator from New York and
Shaffique had asked Schumer, who was the highest ranking Jewish
politician in the US, what he thought the university should

(21:45):
do with Prohama students who disrupted studies on campus and
harassed and were harassing Jews, and Schumer, according to Shaffique,
said the university should do nothing, as anti Semitism is
a political issue that only interests Republicans. So Chuck Schumer,
the highest ranking or most visible Jew and the federal government,

(22:11):
said don't bother uh, he didn't care. It only really
bothers Republicans. Schumer denies that he said this, But it's
kind of hard to imagine why an experienced leader such
as Schaffique would lie about something like that in an
internal conversation with her confidants, you know, And it can't
be denied that the Biden administration didn't do anything to

(22:35):
ensure the safety of Jewish students on the campuses. So
I find it believable what that Schumer said that. Do
you do you think that Schaffique made it up or
do you think that that you know, she's telling the truth.
You know that they the Democrats did not make an

(22:55):
effort to stop anti Semitism on campuses or anywhere else. Instead,
they used the mindless college students. They were out there
to promote hatred, and these students didn't even have the
mental wherewithal to realize that they were being used and

(23:17):
what they were doing. I don't know if you remember this.
This cut resonates with me all the time. I remember
this guy. It's never going to dim in my mind.
I was so horrified by it. This is a New
York University.

Speaker 5 (23:33):
Student.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
I think she's from Columbia, but she came down to
support NYU and she's at a pro Haamas demonstration and
has no idea why she's there, but she felt it
was important to demonstrate Cut twenty six.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
Please and what would you say is the main goal
with tonight's protest?

Speaker 7 (23:52):
I think the goal is sewing our support for Palestine
and demanding that NYU saw.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
I honestly don't know what used to do.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Is there something that n YU was doing? I really don't.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Do you know what.

Speaker 6 (24:05):
About Israel protesting here that was more educated?

Speaker 2 (24:12):
I'm not either.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
I can't.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
I was there on the Columbia and we came down.
They said, am I used to make our support, so.

Speaker 6 (24:20):
I came down.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
I've heard there's lots of comps and some people.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Were saying it was getting dangerous.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
I have no words for this. She doesn't even know
why she's there. They're chanting from the river to the sea,
which is the eradication of Israel. And she has no
idea what she's doing there, but it's the thing to do.
And none of them who are out there with hate
speech were held accountable, none of them were I mean?
And and did the Democrats think that such hatred would

(24:48):
win them the election last November? If so, they miscalculated.
Do you think that the Democrat policies of DEI are
responsible for the growth of anti Semitism in the US?
I ask you. Let's go to Andy and Milford. Andy,
Welcome to w.

Speaker 7 (25:05):
R K O.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
How are you.

Speaker 8 (25:09):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (25:09):
Doing very well Sandy, and you're doing a great job
sitting in for Jeff Cooner.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Thank you. Do you do you think do you see
a correlation between de e I and anti Semitism?

Speaker 4 (25:24):
I do I do? On the on the on the
on the on the on the immediate question of d
e I, It's clear to me that d e I
is in direct violation of existing federal civil rights law.

(25:45):
So it's not even. It's not even the diversity, equity
and inclusion that it claims to be. It's not even.
It's not equal rights for all. I also, Sandy, want
to get to the broader question that you started out

(26:06):
with and the show as to why anti Semitism is
on the rise in America. I think a big part
of the reason is this unholy red green alliance that's
come about in the Democratic Party. And we particularly see
this with the rise of Zoron Mondani in the mayoral

(26:27):
race in New York, Okay. And and what's driving that
is the main thing for the progressive is they hate
the West. They have to bring down the West at
all cost, and hatred most certainly is one of the

(26:50):
components that they use to drive that. They and that
and for them, if they have to use anti Semitism
to achieve that end goal, then so be it in
their mind. But why but why don't care?

Speaker 1 (27:12):
But why anti semitism? Why? Why why pick out the Jews?

Speaker 4 (27:18):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (27:19):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Look back in history the Nazis in Germany picked out
the Jews.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
So you're saying they're a convenient target.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
That's that's what I'm saying, yeah, they're a convenient target.
And the thing is, the thing is they you know,
I mean, they're in with the Marxist okay, to drive
their agenda bringing down the West, but but they need

(27:53):
something more and the something more is the Islamist And
in their mind they can use the islam As for
a time to achieve what they want, which is to
bring down the West, which is to bring down the America.
And in their minds they think once they've achieved that objective,

(28:15):
they can just you know, the reds in that coalition
can just push the Marxist out of the way and
they can have their socialism, totalitarianism, or whatever have you.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
This is Sandy Shack. And for Jeff Cooner, why is
anti Semitism growing in the US. That's the big question here.
Our text number seven zero four seven zero two of
seven says, if it's about Israel, why are American Jews
persecuted at colleges? Because it's not just about Israel. It's
about hatred, and hatred doesn't stop at the river's edge,

(28:46):
you know. Hatred doesn't know boundaries, geographic boundaries. It's gonna
if it's allowed to grow, it grows and Andy from
Milford says it's the growth of communism that is the
basis of the attack against the Jews, and I don't

(29:06):
think he's wrong. You know, they wanted to create a
common enemy and the Jews were expedient. I don't think
he's wrong about that, and I think that the rise
of DEI under the Biden administration made it easy for
that to flourish. DEI policies, it turns out, do very
little to promote tolerance and inclusion. Instead, what they did

(29:32):
was codify bias and specifically against Jews among others. You
heard what they said at this one college that Jews
are filthy Zionists, and they went after the head, the
black female head of the DEI department, because she said
the Jews should be treated equally. This was the world

(29:53):
created and supported by the Biden administration, with you know,
massive rise and anti Semitic incidents every year that he
was in office. And to this entered Donald Trump. In
the first weeks of his second term. President Trump declared
an all at war on DEI and people saw that
as racist, which I was very taken aback by because

(30:19):
I suppose if you think that DEI is in fact
a bastion of tolerance. Then okay, then that would be true,
but it's not. And President Trump not only declared that
every federal agency must immediately dismantle all DEI departments that
had been established in the previous administration, but also instructed

(30:40):
the federal government to identify and immediately combat all DEI
initiatives in the private sector that led to reverse discrimination.
It would appear that President Trump had his finger on
it all along. DEI was not about helping minorities, whether
it be about skin color or gender fluidity. That may

(31:05):
have been how it was intended, but in its execution,
it became a promotional tool for the racism of the
progressive left and the communists. Like Andy from Milford pointed out,
you can see it in the companies such as Facebook, Google, Disney.

(31:27):
They all rushed to immediately dismantle DEI initiative just a
few months ago that they boasted about. And you know,
these departments had hundreds of employees and budgets of millions
of dollars. And when the President said, you know, declared
in several interviews to build an American society color blind

(31:49):
and based on abilities, not identities, they said, uh, oh,
we've been caught. And so they started to they started
to dismantle stuff, but the genie was already out of bottle.
I think in regard to DEEI, once you allow hatred
and bias and racism to flourish, it's really hard to

(32:10):
uh to stop, it's really hard to put that hatred back.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
In the bottle.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
And you can see this in some of the horrific
incidents that have occurred in this country recently. You saw
the attack in Boulder, Colorado, where a man, you know,
a hurled homemade incendiary devices and used a flamethrower to
attack people gathered at a rally supporting the release of

(32:35):
Israeli hostages held in Gaza. How could you be against
hostages being released? Yet this guy attacked them with molotov cocktails.
Eight people were injured. And then the guy, Mohammed Sabri Solomon,
he's forty five years old, was taken into custody. But
you know he's burning people, burning people who want hostages released.

(32:59):
I mean, the horrifying elements of that. Then in May,
don't forget two Israeli embassy employees, yarun Lishinski thirty and
his soon to be fiance Sarah Lynn Milgram, were shot
and killed outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in DC after
an attending an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee.

(33:22):
They were planning to get engaged and were targeted as
they exited the building. Now, the MPD, that's the Metropolitan
Police Department, arrested Elias Rodriguez at the scene, and one
one is told CNN that she heard Rodrigue say I
did it for Gaza and free Palestine. He has been
charged with first degree murder, and Jeanine Piro, who's the

(33:45):
US attorney in DC, called it a death penalty case.
So I suspect that that's going to be one of
President Trump's I would say, examples of how the death
penalty can be judiciously used coming up soon. But you

(34:05):
would think that American universities would want to get on
board with stopping this plague and this violence, wouldn't you
that they would rally around and help stop anti Semitism.
But oddly enough, no, you know, Instead, the universities declared
war on President Trump and his policies and vowed to

(34:26):
continue on their path until further notice. Princeton University president
Christopher Eisgruber chose the famous British slogan from World War Two,
keep Calm and carry on, which left little doubt as
to you know, who the good guys were and who
were the potential destroyers of democracy? In his view, the university,

(34:49):
according to him, will continue with its DEI initiatives until
all the lawsuits recently filed against President Trump and his
orders disbanding DEI are resolved in court. How do you
make these people see the light? Is my question. You know,
the Trump administration is nothing if not creative, I have

(35:13):
to say, and you know you've seen it in what
they do with the US immigration laws. They have ordered
the immediate deportation of any non citizen who supports and
encourages terrorist organizations. And since the significant number of the
latter's anti Jewish activists on campus are foreigners staying in
the US on student visas, the administration is demanding their

(35:37):
immediate deportation. And this is going to put universities in
a sensitive position because places like Columbia, for example, which
did everything this powered to avoid identifying the students who
participated in the anti Semitic riots on campus last year
and ordered, you know, a slipshot investigation that was closed

(35:59):
out after six days, claiming it failed to identify any
of the students guilty of disturbing the peace. Given the
fact that most of the rioters were documented in videos
uploaded to social media, that's ridiculous, just patently ridiculous. But
the university administration knows that if it points to names
and students and then those people are deported as a result,

(36:22):
it will have to deal not only with internal riots,
but also with a huge loss of income. Because I
can point to I think it was in twenty twenty
three fifty six percent of Columbia students or foreign students
who usually pay the full freight full tuition, and they
don't want to do anything that might lead to a

(36:44):
loss in that income. I think that's a big part
of what you see here. But President Trump is not
backing down because President Trump is willing to grants and
federal funding. Colombia alone receives more than six billion from

(37:05):
the federal government in the last five years in the
form of grants. So if President Trump decides not to
approve budgets for any academic institution that doesn't comply with
his mandate to get rid of DEI they're going to
lose a lot of money, and I think that's as

(37:26):
it should be. Don't you Do you think President Trump
is doing the right thing to combat anti Semitism. Let's
go to Mike in Wakefield. Mike, Welcome to WRKO.

Speaker 5 (37:37):
Sandy, good to hear your voice. I'll try to compress
this as much as I can. I attended a rally
at Kennedy's School of Government about fifteen years ago, and
I'll never forget the mmity, the hatred by the students

(38:00):
that were in favor of welcoming this Iranian dignitary to
speak to the freshman class at Kennedy's School of Government.
And you know, I've attended rallies before, but my blood
ran cold when I saw the hatred that was on

(38:24):
the other side. I didn't know where to put this
at the time, but I distinctly remember it, and I
felt obliged to call you this morning and communicate this.
That's all I have, Sandy.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Well, do you think President Trump is doing the right
thing by pulling funding to these universities that don't allow
that don't hold people accountable for anti Semitic actions like
you know, basically roughing up Jewish students as they walk
across campus.

Speaker 5 (39:02):
We agree with you, Sandy, and thank you for being
the conduit of this important information.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
Oh you're welcome, Mike, and thank you for taking the
time and trouble to call. I appreciate it very much.
I really think that, and I have gotten feedback from
people who think that these policies of getting rid of
or yanking people who demonstrate against Israel, and it's not

(39:35):
so much against Israel, it's against Jewish students, making Jewish
students culpable for what Israel does on a political level.
I think that identifying these students if they're foreign visas
and revoking the visas is reasonable. But the feedback that
I've gotten from some people is that they believe that

(39:56):
that's a racist thing to do that, or it's portrayed
by the mainstream as a racist thing to do that.
President Trump doesn't like brown students or Middle Eastern students,
or they're making it about race, and it's President Trump
who's a racist. And I agree that it can be
about race, but I don't think it's President Trump that's

(40:17):
made it racist. I believe it's the DEI policies that
have made it racist. And have made Jews fair game
for somebody's hatred, for anybody's hatred, or if people want
to feel part of a group and they want to
feel that they are morally superior, they follow the DEI
rules of engagement, and that says it's okay to go

(40:38):
after Jews. This is what DEI and the progressive left
have basically allowed to flourish in our country. And I
see President Trump is doing his best to stamp that out.
I don't view it as a First Amendment issue. I
view it as a racist issue, and I find it

(41:02):
pretty creative for him to respond in that respect and
to pull federal funding. And I think he's doing the
right thing. And it's not just the Ivy's, it's not
just Harvard and Columbia and Brown and so forth. It
is all sorts of and you heard the one in California,
the Northern California University. It's all sorts of universities. I

(41:24):
have a problem, and it didn't just end when President
Trump came in. They're trying to put an end to it,
and they're doing your best for going one by one
through the universities, but it's still it's still happening. The
Department of Education says George Mason University has violated civil
right civil right rights laws with DEI hiring practices. And

(41:44):
this was just this week that they announced that George
Mason University was using racism to hire people. They're legally
that this is the claim that they're legally using race
and other immunable characteristics in university practice and policies, including
hiring promotion. They received complaints, They meaning the Department the

(42:07):
Office for Civil Rights received complaints from several professors alleging
that the university leadership had adopted DEI policies in twenty
twenty and were still following them giving preferential treatment to
potential and current faculty from underrepresented groups to advance anti racism.

(42:27):
And when you're trying to quote advance anti racism, usually
what happens is you're promoting racism. The Department of Education
cited statements from the president of the university and school
policies that show support for racial preferencing. The department alleged
that one high level school administrator said that Washington created

(42:51):
an atmosphere of surveillance pertaining to the university's hiring decisions.
In relation to DEI objectives. In twenty twenty, university president
Gregory Washington called for expunging the so called racist vestiges
from the university's campuses. He doesn't seem to be aware
that what he's saying is in its in and of

(43:11):
itself racist. He then waged a university wide campaign to
implement unlawful DEI policies that discriminated on the basis of race.
You can't make that up. So we're going to fight
racism with more racism, is what they did. And you know,

(43:32):
that's that's bizarre, and that's George Mason University. Now at
George Washington University, they've just been charged by the Justice
Department for violating civil rights by acting deliberately indifferent to
instances of anti Semitism on campus. In a letter to

(43:54):
the university following an investigation, the Department of Justice says
that Jewish and Israeli students and faculty were subjected to
a hostile environment that was offensive, severe, and pervasive, and
they cited clashes between pro Palestinian protesters last spring and
Jewish students, and the DOJ says that the school failed

(44:18):
to take appropriate action despite a multitude of complaints. The
Justice Department gave the school the opportunity to enter into
what they call a voluntarily resolution agreement and then threatened
to proceed with enforcement if they didn't really try to
meet a resolution. According to the letter signed by Harmat K. Dillon,

(44:44):
who's the assistant ag of the agent's Civil Rights Division,
the anti Semitic hatred based misconduct of by GW students
directed at Jewish student's faculty employees wasn't a word shocking.
The behavior was demonstrably abhorrent and moral and importantly illegal.

(45:05):
GW's response to this GW condemns, condemns anti semitism and
has absolutely no place on our campuses or in a
civil and humane society. Moreover, our actions clearly demonstrate our
commitment to addressing anti Semitic actions and promoting an inclusive
campus by upholding a safe, respectful, and accountable environment. What

(45:28):
does that remind you of? It reminds me of the
lip service of the Biden administration. No, no, we hate
anti Semitism, but they don't do anything about it. That's
the problem, that is what is happening. So, I mean,
the Biden administration left us in a climate of anti

(45:50):
Semitic hatred through its DEI policies and its failure to act.
The Trump administration is doing its best to now dismantle
that environment through threatening. Absolutely, they're threatening universities to take
away money, which I don't have a problem with. And
they're threatening students who threaten other students if they are foreigners, saying,

(46:14):
if you're going to come here and threaten people, you
can't stay here. I don't find that unreasonable. I know
a lot of people who do. Do you which side
of the fence are you on in that one? I
mean President Trump is not afraid to take actions. I
support the actions that he's taking. When violent demonstrators impose

(46:36):
terror against Jews on campus, and when there's no real
freedom of expression for anyone who supports Israel, our universities
are in danger of turning from the acclaimed, world renowned
academic institutions into what are essentially nests of hatred and violence.

(46:59):
And the previous administration, the Body administration saw what was happening,
and they actually encouraged it through through an action and
through the DEI policies. This administration is committed to changing
that direction. Do you support what they're doing to to
achieve that. Let's go to rich In Natick. Rich Welcome

(47:23):
to w RKO. How are you.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
Well?

Speaker 8 (47:26):
Oh that was that was a quick calling on me.

Speaker 7 (47:29):
I usually have to wait for a while, but uh yeah,
a lot this DEI. You know, I think a lot
of people don't understand misinterpret the word equity.

Speaker 8 (47:41):
You know, it's not equality, it's equity. And where they
come from, you know, the progressives think of equity, and
I think this is the right definition. Is you get
back what you put in. So if you feel like
you're in any oppressed group, they want to appress the
people that they think are oppressing them. So they use

(48:04):
this dee as like a trojan horse. As far as
the colleges go, tons of money flow into these colleges
the Middle Eastern governments and they pay off, you know,
these professors and administrators, you know, to teach this anti
you know Jewish, you know material that and you see

(48:27):
the outcome of it. I mean, I mean in some
of this stuff is that you know, paid protests as
also that come through dirt bags like George Soros and others.
But you know, you just it's just shocking to see
really in our country that this stuff is going on.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Do you think President Trump is following the right path
to write the ship to in withholding money from universities
and expelling people who are here on visas who are
are practicing anti Semitism and basically abuse of Jewish students.

Speaker 8 (49:06):
Absolutely, and it's a good start, but you have to
get to the root cause and that takes time. And
you know another thing, I think a lot of these
people that claim to hate the Jews, you know, there's
a lot of Jewish people in authority areas in the
government and our government and stuff. So you could probably

(49:26):
replace the Jews with any other group and it would
be the same scenario. You know, people that hold positions
of power, they want to take that power. So it's
at the end of the day, it's all a power grab,
you know, and whatever, you know, what they do, whatever
they do, you know, for the means to try to
gain that power themselves.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Well, an earlier caller, Andy from Milford, thought that it
was a or Milton thought it was a function of
the growth of socialism and communism. And I will say
that one of the things radicals, the Rules for Radicals
says that one of the ways you gain power is

(50:07):
you make a group an enemy, and so if you
have a common enemy, it's easier to draw people together.
And if you apply that rule, then that's what they're
doing with the Jews. They're making them a common enemy
to draw other disparate groups together to create a power base.
Do you think he has a point?

Speaker 8 (50:27):
Absolutely, it's easier to round up a thousand with hate
than one with logic.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
Yeah, that's an axiom that or a maximum that I
think is true in this current situation. Yeah, and it's
there has been anti semitism for generations, without a doubt.
But to see the giant leap forward that it took