Friday, October 24, 2003

It can happen anywhere 

Via PowerLine comes an article by Natan Sharansky on how dangerous it is to support Israel on college campuses. My friends in business schools laugh sometimes at the problems I have working in a College of Social Sciences. But it can happen there, too.
During a frank and friendly conversation with a group of Jewish students at Harvard University, one student admitted to me that she was afraid � afraid to express support for Israel, afraid to take part in pro-Israel organizations, afraid to be identified. The mood on campus had turned so anti-Israel that she was afraid that her open identification could cost her, damaging her grades and her academic future. That her professors, who control her final grades, were likely to view such activism unkindly, and that the risk was too great.

Having grown up in the communist Soviet Union, I am very familiar with this fear to express one's opinions, with the need to hold the "correct opinions" in order to get ahead, with the reality that expressing support for Israel is a blot on one's resume. But to find all these things at Harvard Business School? In a place that was supposed to be open, liberal, professional? At first I thought this must be an individual case, particular to this student. I thought her fears were exaggerated. But my conversations with other students at various universities made it clear that her feelings are widespread, that the situation on campuses in the United States and Canada is more serious than we think. And this is truly frightening.
Sharansky worries for future US policy towards Israel being made by students trained this way. He should be. Hell, even showing a flag causes problems.

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